Feeding Maize Silage

[Derrick Hughes]

Can you feed straight off the harvester and would it keep a few days unclamped

 

[Gulli]

Yes and yes, but it depends how long you class as a few days amongst other things.
Should be fine for a couple of days though

 

[harperfarmer]

Definitely fine to feed but general advice is that it will feed better if left a month in the clamp, we generally feed ours within a fortnight or as soon as we need to!

 

[Great In Grass]

You can feed right away but I would wait for at least 7 days for the Initial (in clamp) fermentation to take place. Opening sooner can let air in and have a severe effect on fermentation, the longer maize is left ensiled the starch digestibility of maize silage improves

 

[Gilchro]

You can feed right away but I would wait for at least 7 days for the Initial (in clamp) fermentation to take place. Opening sooner can let air in and have a severe effect on fermentation, the longer maize is left ensiled the starch digestibility of maize silage improves

Totally agree. Used to deal with a dairy that took extra wholecrop in to an ag-bag one year to carry them to Christmas and then they worked on the pit from there. After that, they were always leaving the new season wholecrop closed up till Christmas to make sure it was well fermented before they fed it out

 

[Martyn]

Ok I'm am a complete novis with maize we have grown 400t for the first time this year, a lot more crop volume than expected.

Am thinking about maby feeding a little to the cows, they are currently on 16%parlour cake and grassing new seeds, got approx 35-40 days of grassing ahead of them. Does feeding maize help keep grass in them better like straw does? Do I need to up the protien of the cake? Would usually start feeding a little grass silage but we currently have about 30% grass silage to maize silage so trying to preserve it!