- Location
- Acton Scott, South Shropshire
Black plastic and oxygen barrier film on sidewalls and top. Edges all tucked in and overlapped. Secure covers and siloseal rubber mats
-
Welcome to The Farming Forum!
As part of this update, we have made a change to the login and registration process. If you are experiences any problems, please email [email protected] with the details so we can resolve any issues.
Vacuum Silage
- Thread starter CDavidLance
- Start date
- Location
- Devon, UK
Sealing. Particularly at the ends of the line.
The shape that has to be sealed is just too awkward, even for experienced handlers of Sheet Seam, to get a sealing line put together that will stand the 300 mbar vacuum. Even with some sort of ag bag tube the ends would be difficult for the purposes of drawing a vacuum.
This is why, with round bales, my conclusion is that they have to be bagged and vacuum extracted individually, however big they are. This is not as daunting as it sounds because the vacuum time is very quick with something like a BL42 pump, just seconds to get down to 300 mbars.
If you would like to experiment with your idea and show me how it can be done then please prove me wrong. I have tried working with round bales and I can't see how pods of that shape can be made to work with vacuum.
Oblong bales can be put in pods for vacuum, but only oblong will work.
One other note with your arrangement is that the resulting shape might also be unstable if the ground isn't perfectly level. Other details are in post #377.
- Location
- America's dairyland
Mostly just logistics of putting it together. Silage bags are used for maize, haylage, or grain, with a bagger that compresses chopped forage into a tube, so no need to apply vacuum, the forage is already packed and airtight. Round bales would have to be squeezed into the bags in order to keep the bag taut, that would be quite a challenge for little gain over the current method of wrapping bales with film.
- Location
- Devon, UK
When you write "overlap", how many feet or metres would you reckon to use for each overlap of sheets that meet?
I wonder if a high tip type dump trailer would heap it up enough instead of the self unload trailer ? they can quite be high at the back..
Interesting idea.Building the clamp on the plastic sheet has always been a problem i cant quite solve.Back in the days of vacuum silage not everyone would have had a self unloading trailer so there must be a technique to use a conventional buckrake.
There is an ICI Agricultural Division Film held by the MERL at Reading called Farming with Polythene where they showed the technique being used on their farms.
- Location
- Devon, UK
Volume Control.
The harvester is designed to cope with a wind row volume input, not a trailer load. It would instantly block.
- Location
- Devon, UK
The original UK demonstrations of Vacuum Silage in 1965 were using buckrakes and forage ramps. Lots of hand work after the main volume was in place to achieve sensible shaped sides and returning the ramp forage to the stack before sheeting down. Hand work at that end of the stacking slows down sheeting and pumping.
The self unloading trailers were produced in answer to the positioning difficulties in the stack so the handwork was done as the grass came in and very little had to be finsihed off before sheeting down once the last load was in. Field clamps of Vacuum Silage are a young person's game because you can't get away from the need for a lot of handwork at some stage of the stacking process.
The idea of dumping a trailer load at a time has some usefulness, but the overall stack shape is just as important as how each load comes in. The tracked raker is probably the best thing I have seen to replace a self unloading trailer as long as it is scrupulously clean with no oil leaks! It means a second person is needed.
The only way one person can cope with the whole job for a field clamp of Vacuum Silage is using a self unloading trailer. I am still waiting for an estimate of what that would cost.
I think the easiest mechanised access to Vacuum Silage is bagging round bales and using a fast vacuum pump on each bag in its final storage position.
- Location
- Devon, UK
A bagged big oblong bale would come close to this, but dealing with more than 1 or 2 tonnes at a time is probably for the future. This may be the next project for a machine manufacturer. The complex operations that are already possible just need to be extended so that a bag is put over a transportable baled product ready for vacuum extraction, in theory.
The principle of extracting gases once the bale has reached its storage position means that it might not be a good idea to do that bit on a trailer. It is best to apply the vacuum once the bale has finished surviving transportation and any necessary repairs have been made to the bag.
Last edited:
There's mileage in a vacuumed totally encapsulated and sealed clamp , just need to think and work around and modernise the mechanics of it the quality of silage potential of the system would be surely wrong to be lost .
Bagging R bales would be a good tool to separate at feed out well all the usual advantages of bales but they dont seal very well even with cable ties,and the CO 2 would be hard to remove the day after.
definitely longer and more fiddly vacuuming each one individually instead of a days clamp.
Bagging R bales would be a good tool to separate at feed out well all the usual advantages of bales but they dont seal very well even with cable ties,and the CO 2 would be hard to remove the day after.
definitely longer and more fiddly vacuuming each one individually instead of a days clamp.
Last edited:
Lovely pit just found this thread, great to see the old silage knife in action (which I only remember because of father telling me about...!)The quality of a well made vacuum compressed clamp can be exceptional which is why I kept using the method until I retired in 2002. The photo shows a newly opened clamp in 1991 that had zero waste, zero effluent and the sheep ate the lot.
- Location
- Devon, UK
Latest Vacuum Silage Analysis Results (Sept 2022)
The table below shows Silage Analysis for the Vacuum Silage that has been made this year in North Devon. The Vacuum Silage column results are an average of two samples and the Day 5 Clamped input was one sample that was on trend with the other windrow samples. Day 2 was when the windrows should have gone into the clamp, but that was delayed to Day 5.
The headlines are that dry matter was on target at 34 %. Metablisable Energy was almost completely conserved in the Vacuum Silage. The sugars decline that was happening in the windrows was stopped the moment the forage went under the Vacuum.
The protein story has been quite stable all through the process from standing crop to Vacuum Silage. Very little proteolysis was happening in the windrows and that never got established in the sealed Vacuum Silage.
I am going to do some research on the Nitrate story. It appears that the instant anaerobic conditions might favour bacteria that remove nitrate from the forage. If that is the case then maybe this process decontaminates silage with respect to nitrates. I haven't come across this detail before.
The pH of 4.3 and naturally produced Lactic Acid at 56 g/kg did the pickling job without any artificial additives. Just Vacuum. The Acetic Acid (vinegar) is left over from first phase fermentation at 13 g/kg. The silage smells like chutney, or sweet pickle, just as it should.
The main thing is that what went into the clamp was immediately conserved at the quality level it was when it went in. That is what all silage making should do. This is always the case with properly sealed Vacuum Silage Clamps. That is why the food industry uses this technique.
These results are not scientifically rigorous, but they are good enough to show trends and stories and give rough estimates of losses without being too detailed.
If we had managed to clamp the forage on Day 2 then the sugars would have been well above usual target levels (40 - 100 g/kg). Maybe next year that will happen. Watch this space. In the meantime the Day 5 level that was conserved at 87 g/kg for sugars is in the middle of the conventional target range. So that is a good result and better things are possible.
The damaged silage will be discussed on a separate post
The table below shows Silage Analysis for the Vacuum Silage that has been made this year in North Devon. The Vacuum Silage column results are an average of two samples and the Day 5 Clamped input was one sample that was on trend with the other windrow samples. Day 2 was when the windrows should have gone into the clamp, but that was delayed to Day 5.
The headlines are that dry matter was on target at 34 %. Metablisable Energy was almost completely conserved in the Vacuum Silage. The sugars decline that was happening in the windrows was stopped the moment the forage went under the Vacuum.
The protein story has been quite stable all through the process from standing crop to Vacuum Silage. Very little proteolysis was happening in the windrows and that never got established in the sealed Vacuum Silage.
I am going to do some research on the Nitrate story. It appears that the instant anaerobic conditions might favour bacteria that remove nitrate from the forage. If that is the case then maybe this process decontaminates silage with respect to nitrates. I haven't come across this detail before.
The pH of 4.3 and naturally produced Lactic Acid at 56 g/kg did the pickling job without any artificial additives. Just Vacuum. The Acetic Acid (vinegar) is left over from first phase fermentation at 13 g/kg. The silage smells like chutney, or sweet pickle, just as it should.
The main thing is that what went into the clamp was immediately conserved at the quality level it was when it went in. That is what all silage making should do. This is always the case with properly sealed Vacuum Silage Clamps. That is why the food industry uses this technique.
These results are not scientifically rigorous, but they are good enough to show trends and stories and give rough estimates of losses without being too detailed.
If we had managed to clamp the forage on Day 2 then the sugars would have been well above usual target levels (40 - 100 g/kg). Maybe next year that will happen. Watch this space. In the meantime the Day 5 level that was conserved at 87 g/kg for sugars is in the middle of the conventional target range. So that is a good result and better things are possible.
The damaged silage will be discussed on a separate post
I think you will find that a lot of livestock farmers don't have lots of time in the summer ,i know i don't particularly as a mainly one man band , nor never have either nor spring nor winter or autumn always something to do work wise , the list is endless with stuff to do fenceing as one simple example .
They have 'rented oversized tractors 'i presume you mean 'contractors'? as commonly occurs on modern farms because that is the most business thing to do to get the use modern efficient harvesting machinery .
Yes oversized tractors will damage the ground if the soil is damp / wet particulary,which certainly can be very negative.
Large bales are more fuel and time efficient that's why they have got bigger. and the denser they have got has actually improved silage in them because theres less oxygen instead for the get go. The revers could be said of hay actually and i prefer a less dense bale unless the hay is a dry as the driest chip you've ever seen
because it lets the bale breath a bit more than if its rammedin ultra tight like modern bales are often, thats why we made better small bale hay.especiallywhen we handled a lot by hand a lot less dense they were, and a more natural way to make it,as in nature it either dries things or ferments and pickles them to preserve .
- Location
- Devon, UK
Damaged Silage Story
This refers to the last two columns of the table below comparing damaged silage to Vacuum Silage.
The clamp was damaged by sheep in a localised area and the change in silage quality over six weeks was measured by sampling directly from the affected area. The results are in the table below. The most interesting comparison is with the Vacuum Silage column. That gives a before and after story.
The damage caused punctures to the sheet, and air to get in to the clamp, and some direct contamination from the sheep’s feet occurred. That might explain the ash value change.
The smell of the silage was obviously more butyric and rank, and protein degradation gave the smell of rotting material. The silage was also heating up. This is consistent with Chlostridial infection. The smells indicate that the silage is becoming less palatable to livestock. The results show that Ammonium (NH3) had increased and that is one of the quickest and most noticeable indicators of protein breakdown.
The water content increased because of breakdown of dry matter, both sugars and proteins, producing water. The Damaged sample was producing effluent in the sample bag (21 % DM).
The pH was rising and Lactic Acid was being destroyed, with Butyric Acid and Acetic Acid taking over. That is consistent with Chlostridial activity. (Butyric Acid was not analysed, but you could smell it!)
Once again the most dramatic changes were in the sugars values. In six weeks roughly two thirds of the sugars in the Vacuum Silage had been destroyed. In one more month those values might be close to zero due to this secondary fermentation. This shows the potential damage occurring at feeding out if silage is not protected. The majority of this damage is due to exposure to air.
The results also show that, whilst effluent is not produced from wilted grass that is rapidly fermented, when silage is slowly fermented or allowed to break down or become contaminated then effluent is produced and losses can be highly significant. This sample was well on the way to becoming unusable.
This refers to the last two columns of the table below comparing damaged silage to Vacuum Silage.
The clamp was damaged by sheep in a localised area and the change in silage quality over six weeks was measured by sampling directly from the affected area. The results are in the table below. The most interesting comparison is with the Vacuum Silage column. That gives a before and after story.
The damage caused punctures to the sheet, and air to get in to the clamp, and some direct contamination from the sheep’s feet occurred. That might explain the ash value change.
The smell of the silage was obviously more butyric and rank, and protein degradation gave the smell of rotting material. The silage was also heating up. This is consistent with Chlostridial infection. The smells indicate that the silage is becoming less palatable to livestock. The results show that Ammonium (NH3) had increased and that is one of the quickest and most noticeable indicators of protein breakdown.
The water content increased because of breakdown of dry matter, both sugars and proteins, producing water. The Damaged sample was producing effluent in the sample bag (21 % DM).
The pH was rising and Lactic Acid was being destroyed, with Butyric Acid and Acetic Acid taking over. That is consistent with Chlostridial activity. (Butyric Acid was not analysed, but you could smell it!)
Once again the most dramatic changes were in the sugars values. In six weeks roughly two thirds of the sugars in the Vacuum Silage had been destroyed. In one more month those values might be close to zero due to this secondary fermentation. This shows the potential damage occurring at feeding out if silage is not protected. The majority of this damage is due to exposure to air.
The results also show that, whilst effluent is not produced from wilted grass that is rapidly fermented, when silage is slowly fermented or allowed to break down or become contaminated then effluent is produced and losses can be highly significant. This sample was well on the way to becoming unusable.
- Location
- Devon, UK
Nitrate removal from forage in Silage.
A Dutch paper in 1987 reported on the bacteria responsible for reducing Nitrate in forage during silage making. Bacteria increased during wilting and then reduced Nitrate in the first four days of fermentation. They stopped when the pH dropped, but almost all Nitrate was reduced in that time.
It would appear then that decontamination of silage with respect to Nitrate is promoted by wilting and rapid onset of anaerobic conditions in the clamp. Bacteria numbers build up during wilting.
Wetter grass and poor fermentation conditions did not respond in the same way.
The Vacuum Silage analysis showed negligible nitrate at 0 or 1 g/kg (0.1 %). The original standing crop levels of 4 g/kg, that were still present when forage went into the clamp, were reduced during fermentation.
According to the research, additives that artificially acidify forage may stop these bacteria from working. The same may be true for adding Formaldehyde.
https://library.wur.nl/ojs/index.php/njas/article/view/16757
A Dutch paper in 1987 reported on the bacteria responsible for reducing Nitrate in forage during silage making. Bacteria increased during wilting and then reduced Nitrate in the first four days of fermentation. They stopped when the pH dropped, but almost all Nitrate was reduced in that time.
It would appear then that decontamination of silage with respect to Nitrate is promoted by wilting and rapid onset of anaerobic conditions in the clamp. Bacteria numbers build up during wilting.
Wetter grass and poor fermentation conditions did not respond in the same way.
The Vacuum Silage analysis showed negligible nitrate at 0 or 1 g/kg (0.1 %). The original standing crop levels of 4 g/kg, that were still present when forage went into the clamp, were reduced during fermentation.
According to the research, additives that artificially acidify forage may stop these bacteria from working. The same may be true for adding Formaldehyde.
https://library.wur.nl/ojs/index.php/njas/article/view/16757
- Location
- Devon, UK
Feed Trial Observations
The 2022 Vacuum Silage (above and below), the Hay (from the rest of the same field) and the Damaged Silage were all put in front of some housed sheep to observe feed preferences. Some sheep were new to silage and took hay first. Once they had tried Vacuum Silage, all sheep took that in preference to Hay. They only ate Damaged Silage if it was the only thing in front of them.
Preference order: Vacuum Silage, Hay, then Damaged Silage.
The Vacuum Silage was therefore more readily consumed as well as having the best nutritional analysis. This means that there is an advantage in making Vacuum Silage rather than hay for forage conservation.
If the silage is poor quality, however, then it might be better to make hay.
This also confirms that intake is reduced if silage is allowed to spoil.
Thoughts for the day.
The query in the table is to be confirmed.
The 2022 Vacuum Silage (above and below), the Hay (from the rest of the same field) and the Damaged Silage were all put in front of some housed sheep to observe feed preferences. Some sheep were new to silage and took hay first. Once they had tried Vacuum Silage, all sheep took that in preference to Hay. They only ate Damaged Silage if it was the only thing in front of them.
Preference order: Vacuum Silage, Hay, then Damaged Silage.
The Vacuum Silage was therefore more readily consumed as well as having the best nutritional analysis. This means that there is an advantage in making Vacuum Silage rather than hay for forage conservation.
If the silage is poor quality, however, then it might be better to make hay.
This also confirms that intake is reduced if silage is allowed to spoil.
Thoughts for the day.
The query in the table is to be confirmed.
about the Hay.
Interesting especially the moisture content ! (in a good way for big bales) 13% ?
Classic protein drop for it as compared to goodish silage ?
Interesting especially the moisture content ! (in a good way for big bales) 13% ?
Classic protein drop for it as compared to goodish silage ?