SILAGE FIELD DAY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27410, 24 July 1954, Page 5

SILAGE FIELD DAY

Halswell Farmers’ Gathering BIG CROWD ATTENDS Since the disastrous spring a couple of years ago when Halswell town supply dairy farmers found themselves forced to make silage, of material that the weather prevented them from making into hay, they have shown a great increase of interest in silage. Almost all of these men now make

it as a matter of course, but few of them consider they know all the answers. That is why there was such a good crowd, about 50, at the silage field day organised last week by the Halswell branch of Federated Farmers. Not by any means all the visitors were from Halswell. Some were from North Canterbury, Malvern and Ellesmere.

• This year visits were made to farms at Belfast, Sefton, and Woodend, and at each one lively discussions arose. At the Devonvale farm at Belfast, Mr Ben Johns took the party to two pits in river sand. One of these was dug four years ago. One side has stood four years’ use without appreciable damage or need for further work, but the other side, near an irrigation pond, has been damaged to some extent by seepage and has needed attention before being filled. This pit held silage of exceptional good quality. It was made about Christmas time from a heavy crop of ryegrass and red clover and was given salt and molasses. Points explained by Mr Johns were that with experience it was possible to tell by the colour of the material whether it had been given enough heating, but he added that it paid to use a thermometer to check temperatures until sufficient experience with colour had been acquired. The temperature aimed at at Devonvale -was 120 degrees. “We find that if it heats above that, sheep like it better but cows don’t,” said Mr Johns. “Most of the text books recommend a lower temperature, but we find here that at a lower temperature we make a sour silage that cows won’t eat.” This pit was finished off with very young grass which was given no special rolling. It made a good cover, and waste was only three to four

inches at most on the top, and, of course, there was no waste whatever on the sides of the pit. Mr Johns emphasised the importance of proper drainage from the bottom of the pit. Unless drainage was good, the bottom of the pit was badly cut about by the vehicles used in feeding out in the winter. It took one man about two hours a day to put out enough hay and silage for a herd of 66 cows, he said. They had found that about half silage and half hay was the ideal ration. Cows would fill up with silage at once and would not touch it again until next day, but they would keep on nibbling at the hay. Dry cattle were used as followers to pick up the silage and hay left by the dairy cows, and they did very well indeed on it. The farm has been able to replace large areas of chou moellier and mangels with silage, which is fed out from about Easter until well on into' September. Proper Heating

Mr Johns used the second pit to demonstrate the necessity for allowing material to heat properly before continuing to fill on top of it. Wet weather and cold air temperatures about show time when the pit was being filled prevented one day’s. fill from heating properly. The material should have been given time to wilt, but pressure of work made that impossible. The resulting silage is of a most attractive bright green colour,

but the cows will not look at it, and it is waste.

“It is not hard to make silage, and you can make it anywhere on .the farm according to where you want to use it.” said Mr A. G. Stewart, of

Waikuku, who has had many years’ experience with silage. “There is only one rule—you must have it sappy or it will not heat properly, and don’t be frightened of overheating when you are starting a pit.” Mr Stewart makes silage in an above-ground pit with walls made from gravel and mud collected during ditch cleaning. The silage is built up well above the top of the walls. The stack shows a good deal of waste on the shoulders above the walls, and Mr Stewart used this fault to emphasise the importance of proper consolidation. The men making the pit were new to the job and kept the sides too high when filling, he said. They were unable to keep the tractor on it to get proper consolidation because the green material built up at the sides tended to slide outward. The middle should be kept a little higher than the sides during filling. The system used on this farm is to fill the back of the pit to a depth of about five or six feet, miss a day, and then put in perhaps twice as much. If the new material does not heat properly, it is given an extra day. The pit is long enough to allow material to be put into it further along while the earlier fill is heating, and this saves missing a day’s cutting and carting. Mr Stewart said there were no definite rules for silage making beyond watching the heat. Wilting is the practice oh this farm, but Mr Stewart said he did not know whether there was much in it or not. He believed in wilting clover and lucerne. Wilting made for quicker heating, and of course made for lighter carting. There was no comparison between silage and chou moellier for milking, he said. Silage was much superior, and was very much less trouble to feed out. Mr Colin Wheeler, a returned soldier on part of the old Wyllie property on the flats at Sefton, showed a wedge clamp made from 10 acres of grass. He and two neighbours, with two tractors and two buckrakes, took 20 hours to get in the 10 acres. His system was to put in not too much material the first day, so that it would heat properly, and thereafter to get it in as quickly as possible. If care was taken to see that buckrake loads were placed on the clamp to reduce the amount of forking required, it was surprising how quickly silage could be made, he said. The hardest job was sitting on thd tractor. It was essential to keep the sides and back of the clamp square, otherwise the tractor could easily fall off the clamp. Reversed tyres on the tractor might be necessary if the material was very slippery. Dry Material

Mr Wheeler said he had some difficulty this year in getting good consolidation because the material was rather dry and would not compact easily. There was more waste than usual on the top of the clamp as a result.

Mr T. Turner, a neighbour of Mr Wheeler and also a returned man, showed a wedge clamp made on the side of a gully. It was made from a paddock of Hl and white clover which grew very fast and was causing bloat in his cows. He decided to make it into silage, and found it very valuable when he was able to keep up production on silage during the period of feed shortage in February. He demonstrated two mistakes made with the clamp. Some waste had resulted from failure to keep the back and sides square. Where the material bulged out, there was a lot of waste. There was also waste along the middle of the clamp. When it was made, it was intended to complete filling with lucerne, but other work interfered and the lucerne became too mature. A hollow was left in the top and water was collected there and caused waste.

Mr Turner was emphatic that it was a bad practice to go too near the edges of a clamp with a tractor, not only because of the danger of the tractor slipping off. but also because the weight too near the edge tended to make the material below bulge out. Wilting was freely discussed throughout the day, and Mr H. C. Mclntosh, Dairy Board consulting officer, wound up the discussion by saying, “Nobody can say whether you should wilt or not except the man making the silage on the day he is making it. On a hot nor’-west day there will almost be too much wilt by the time you have carted the crop to the stack, but on a dull, cold easterly day you should certainly wilt.” The day finished at the farm of Mr J. Stokes, at Waikuku. where ffie visitors inspected a pit of lucerne silage in shingly ground. Mr Stokes said the pit had been filled very quickly, at about a three-ton load every nine minutes, or between six and seven acres of heavy crop in the

day. He said this might have been rather too fast, but added that he had been making lucerne silage for years and had »not yet found the secret. It was easy to make silage with grass, but lucerne was a different matter. “It is the same with lucerne hay.” he said. “We can make three different sorts of hay in the one day here along the coast.”

The British taxpayer this year will contribute £28,000,000 to support the price of eggs.