Making silage on a small scale from lawn clippings

[saysfaa]

I have time to try silage-making the next time we cut the lawn.

I brought home two 55-gallon steel barrels and their lids. Also, a box of 55-gallon barrel liners (basically big plastic trash bags; not the rigid kind of liner) I already had some of the optional things I've seen in descriptions of how to do it: grain, molasses, salt, and small plastic bags.

I don't have an inner lid. Until I find something better, I'm going to try sand bags as the inner lid.

The barrels are coated on the inside to hold fruit juice so I shouldn't need the liners but I can try without them if I can get this to work.

I know I need to get the moisture level of the grass right. I'm not willing to stink up the microwave to test it that way. So, I will go with the hand squeeze method and add grain or molasses to compensate for the imprecision.

I'm undecided on how many small bags to use. I don't have enough chickens to feed it fast enough to keep the edge fresh. But I'm not sure I will feed it this time anyway. I think I will just play with different size small bags and go with what turns out easiest to work with. Once I can get it to work, I can try adjusting to get it to work better.

If anyone has tried it, please share your results.

 

[Magnumchicken]

Another note. Midwest labs does soil and plant analysis testing. They can do silage and also test your chicken manure for fertilizer quality as well. You say your lawn is well fertilized. I thought my garden was too until I tested. PH was off, some things really low, some really high. The costs were 15 to 25 per test.

 

[saysfaa]

This attempt resulted in compost, not haylage.

I clearly did not have a good seal across the top.

I will try again next year.

 

[Magnumchicken]

Glad to see you tried this. I came close to doing this in 5 gal buckets, but chickens ate all my alfalfa before I got a chance to cut it.

The article you quote, is that factoring in wet weight. I always knew alfalfa to be 30 to 40% protein content on a dry weight basis. Lycene is what Australians call alfalfa. But don't blame them, they are all standing upside down.

I've accidently made silage by cutting and piling grass clippings deep. The inner part became silage for a while before rotting.

Usually farmers are making silage almost immediately after cutting. Then pack it super tight and wrap with no air. I've never heard of farmers do molasses etc on a large scale. Silage is wettest and considered best, but farmers don't like hauling all that water so they resort to haylage and hay.

I do know cows love silage way more than the same plants unfermented.

I love the comments from people who are like oh my how dare you give your chickens rotting food rather than lobster and organic microgreens. Well, I make silage for myself and family all the time. Pickles, sauerkraut, fermented radish, kimchi (fermented with a little raw clam is the secret) not to mention I buy blue cheese, yogurt, sourdough bread, beer etc. in fact the bacteria help with digestion. In fact I'll try fermenting anything. I just add 35 grams or one ounce of salt to one quart jar, fill to the top with whatever veggie and water, and vent daily. Also wet aged steak is the same concept, keep all the air out and sit at cold temp.

If I had to guess, air was probably your biggest enemy. The things other than grass may not have been needed, and I don't think you need to worry about being too wet if you have no air involved. But if you got compost, then you had air. I've removed most of my grass and replaced it with alfalfa for chicken feed, and sorghum to make my own bedding for the coops.

 

[Magnumchicken]

Thank you for updating. It's nice to know what happened so we can all learn from them, even if you didn't get the result you wanted.



Do you have a source for that?

"Lucerne" and "alfalfa" are definitely two names for the same plant, but I have never heard of it being called "Lycene," and google didn't find it either.

Ahaha yea I meant Lucerne. Sorry about that. Lycene is the amino acid.

 

[saysfaa]

One barrel is full.

The hand squeeze method of telling the moisture level did not go well. It might go well enough if I could practice with known moisture levels. My best estimate is the grass had somewhere in the mid to high 60's percent moisture. It needs to be 60-65% for silage. If it is too high, I'll get a butyric acid fermentation instead of a lactic acid fermentation. I'll be able to tell by the smell when I open it up. If I understand how it all works correctly.

It is just lawn clippings. Adding grain or molasses would help it but we started late in the day. It rained earlier and we waited for the grass to dry enough to cut. I just didn't want to take the extra time.

I tried only double bagging with the 55-gallon bags; no smaller bags. I had planned to cut the lawn myself, where I could take as much time as I wanted. Instead, I needed to keep up with my help who was mowing while I did the trimming between emptying wheelbarrow loads.

In the beginning, the bags were obnoxious. Especially dealing with two of them. They slid around, slid down, bunched up, fell in, fell out, billowed.... it was pretty bad.

About the time I had the barrel a third full (the first time - before much packing down), the bags got easier to deal with. I ended up thinking two made made the task easier overall - the sliding around was helpful after the beginning.

I packed it by standing on it. I highly recommend getting a second person or setting up something solid to stand on. Or at least hold on to. Or all three. I'm glad there were no video cameras around.

I knew I needed to pack it as I went rather than just at the end. "Packing," meaning both spreading to leave as few air pockets as possible and weighing it down. The farm scale versions of bunker silos drive over it with tractors to pack it down. I'm not happy with how well I packed it in the beginning. I need a safer way to get into the barrel so I can stand on it sooner and more often. Possibly, standing on something narrower than my shoes might help also - maybe a chunk of 2x4.

My standing technique got better later. It worked better to walk fairly quickly over all of it to get most of the compression done. Then to go back over it more slowly, basically standing on each spot for longer, overlapping steps, rocking, and repeating multiple times. Emphasis on standing a lot longer. Pressing after smaller layers helps also.

I don't know if better pressing later was enough to make up for not enough in the beginning. Anyway, I put at least 15 wheelbarrow loads (about 22 gallons each) of grass into the 55 gallon barrel. So LOTS of packing.

I didn't need the sand bags - I filled the barrel.

Finally, I learned there are two different diameters of 55-gallon barrels. Or my barrels are a little smaller than 55 gallons. The top didn't fit. Neither style of top fit. Nor did a third style of top borrowed from the burn barrel I got at the same place last year. They are all too big. So, I set one top on it and set a five gallon bucket of gravel on that.

 

[raingarden]

I feel like trying anything to supplement chicken feed as things are getting just a tad pricey!!!

I know the feeling. I decided to try eating more chicken.

 

[Silexian]

I think I will give making small batch silage/haylage a go. I think it will be good winter greens for my chickens. That will be another food source produced from my land by me. My goats should benefit from it also. The few times that I have fed silage to my cattle. They ate every little crumb of it.

 

[Folly's place]

I'm not sure that silage is appropriate for chickens in the first place! And that recipe isn't so great as chicken food anyway. Seems like a waste of time and effort to me.
Mary

 

[Folly's place]

Have you looked at any actual ag sites about silage? Not chicken blogs, actual ag extension sites, for example. And inquired about testing your product before trying to feed it.
Mary