Wheat Silage Cover

[Go Cougs]

I’m putting up pea silage right now and an old timer stopped by and said they used to cover their silage piles with wheat seed and it grew and formed a living mulch and protected the silage very well. It sounds a little fishy since the whole point of covering is to exclude oxygen. However, it’s an interesting idea and would be much cheaper than plastic cover. He said they spread enough wheat that the seed almost touches each other and then run the pack tractor over it again and it grew very quickly. Have any of you seen this done?

 

[Fendt65]

Big scale beef fattener near me never sheets his clamps,hardly any waste and it all goes in the mix it seems to work for him bit I don’t have the bottle to do this.

 

[davidroberts30]

I wouldnt have the bottle to do it to my pit with no plastic, but have seen where it could work
I do know of a guy that used to sheet the pit then get the rota spreader and cover the sheet with about 5 inch of muck then throw barley over the muck.come winter just grab handfuls of growing barley and throw it to the floor and slice the sheet off

 

[Al R]

Visited a few AD plants on the continent and here that did it with oats and barley as it was cheaper than wheat. The beauty with doing it for an AD plant is it took the growing cereals and root mass too into the mixer so zero waste. It’s the roots that do the work they go like cress and stop any rain going in etc

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Silage will form it's own cover but you get a bit of waste