Would love to know what happened between the time you bagged the grass and dumped it in a pile, and the time you opened the bag to feed your herd. Did you test for moisture? Did you add bagged molasses? Or did you simply cram the grass into the bag? This is like posting a video "How to Make a Cake" with showing only a grocery sack followed by a birthday celebration.
Pack it in the bag tight to push out most of air. Each time you add some to bag stand on the grass to compact. As far as moisture, looks like hers is pretty dry. Below 60%. If you take a bunch in your hand before packing and make a tight fist, when you open your hand you shouldn't have any visible fluids running out and it should clump into a nice ball and slowly unfold. That's about 70% moisture. Also you should make clippings about a 1/4" in length, hers is to long but looks like it worked. Takes a few months to ferment but if you add molasses and water to a 1:3 ratio it'll take a couple weeks. Lightly add the molasses, to much will make it rot as moisture of silage becomes to wet. Just like filling a silo, same concept.
@@duanedean3256 Second comment on here where you're speaking as an authority yet contradicting every ag manual on Earth. 1/4" inch impacts rumination of cattle, and causes more particulate inhalation. Your fist test is also very cowboyish, it ignores the fact there's hundreds of kinds of leafy plant material used for haylage, let alone hundreds of species of grass. I strongly urge you to look at corporation produced silage manufacturing videos on RU-vid to get a better grasp. Not intentionally trying to beat you up here, but literally 'how to silage' yields first result of watch?v=vpv7AZn6FlA which contradicts everything you've said so far. So don't take my word, I'm just a random on the internet, take the huge corporations who's profitability relies on their honest and scientifically accurate methods for production.
No its silage. Even in silos if it sits to long it'll slightly mold on top. If there is to much mold livestock won't eat it. And they're are mowing that stuff.
@@duanedean3256 No. It's not silage. Even if fermentation was successful (which it wasn't) it would never be silage, it would be haylage. It's imperative you wilt leafy plant matter before ensilaging it. Also without an inoculant, and with such a high fluid level in it, all they got was moldy hay covered in aerobic bacteria. This is a great example of how not to make silage, or haylage.
You need to explain why you're doing what your doing, how it works, how dry does the grass and others have to be before you can ensile it? It feels great, awesome? What are those of us who do not know what it's supposed to feel like feeling for? You obviously know what you're doing, but we do not, so please, could you make another video with much more detail?
They don't know what they're doing. They're calling haylage silage, and feeding their stock rotten hay calling it silage. You must wilt leafy plant matter before ensilaging. Also with the method of air sealing they're using they should be using an inoculant to lower the ph as fast as possible to prevent bacterial growth. Air got to it, ph level never dropped, and it had too much fluid content which is why all they got was rotten year old grass and probably some sickly cattle.
If I remember well, a farm I visited in Nicaragua when I was 13 (during the early 60's) , they stored the grass in a deep underground silo, alternating layers of young corn plants (no more than 4' tall) with some molasses and a bit of urea, plus some powdered lime. The silo was about 100 feet deep and once it was full, they covered the top with a thick tarp and then about three feet of dirt to keep the tarp in place. When opened six months later, the smell was delicious and almost intoxicating. The cows loved it! It was served to them mixed with ground dried corn, husks and all.
That's exactly how silage is made. When they load it into a silo it ferments and take a few months. When they add molasses it speeds the process to a couple weeks depending how much is there.
I believe you made haylage not silage. Your feed looks fairly dry? Silage is in the 60-70% MOISTURE RANGE. Here's a video about real lawn clipping silage. Look up BioPac'r silage explained.
Grass contains through assimilation the most suger at the end of the day. For high quality, it is best to mow your gras at the end of a sunny day. Also, young grass has got a higher nutritional value than old grass (End of summer.) or grass with flower stalks. Thanks for the video
good job making the best of what you got. unfortunately to many people think of ways it will fail instead of working. Bottom line goats are happy and fed they look in good shape and well taken care of.
That's haylage. Also you need to wilt leafy material before ensilage. You desperately need an inoculant, which is why you had mould everywhere and no fermentation present in the end product. You're lucky you haven't poisoned your entire herd with this. This isn't silage, or rather, haylage, this is just year old rotten grass. You need to ensure the PH level is dropped sharply after ensilage. Given you're doing this on a small scale you could use vac bags (and leave ph strips and a bottle inside the bag you can operate from without--given they're transparent--to test the PH drop the first few times you make silage to learn the ropes). Your haylage is just rotten grass, covered in aerobic bacteria. Not good for anything except houseplant fertiliser.
You don't need to wilt it. That looked way too dry to me from the start to make the process work without serious compaction to get the air out. But it worked. The goats gobbled it up. And they are the judges. If it was spoiled she would have reeked when she dug around in it with her hands. And you definitely don't need an inoculant. The bacteria are present from the start, just waiting for the right conditions.
