Silage Making, Step by Step: A Small Farmer's Field Guide

Great silage is made in the field, not in the wrapper. Follow this protocol and your first season can match our factory quality.

Step 1 — Harvest window. Cut maize when the grain is at milk-dough stage: press a kernel and it should dent, not squirt milk, and the plant should be at 30–35% dry matter. Too early and the silage turns sour and watery; too late and it won't ferment or digest.

Step 2 — Chop length. Set the chopper to 8–12 mm. Long chops trap air and grow mould; powder-fine chops ferment too fast and cause acidity. The theoretical cut length matters more than any additive you can buy.

Step 3 — Compact hard, wrap fast. Air is the enemy. Bales must be dense (650+ kg per cubic metre) and wrapped within 2 hours of baling with at least 6 layers of 9-layer film, 50% overlap. Every hour of delay is sugar lost to the air.

Step 4 — Store smart. Keep bales on their flat ends, on pallets or dry ground, in shade, away from sharp stubble and rodents. Inspect weekly for punctures and patch immediately with silage tape. A pinhole becomes a metre of mould in three weeks.

Step 5 — Feed with discipline. Open bales only as needed, use within 3–5 days, and introduce silage gradually over 10–14 days so the rumen adapts. Good silage smells sweet and lactic — if it smells like ammonia or vinegar, don't feed it, and call us: our agronomists troubleshoot for free.

If you produce under our entrepreneurship programme, remember: the buyback guarantee covers quality-passed bales, and these five steps are exactly what our QC measures. Master them once and the income repeats every season.