Round Bale Silage (Lots of questions)

After baling, how long until it's ready to feed?

How long will a bale stay fresh between wrapping and feeding times?

How long will a bale keep before spoiling after opening (or will it spoil)?

In general how heavy is say a 4'x4' bale? I know different balers will make different weights but from your experience what would the weights be?

What's the most common way of handling the bales after wrapping? Do any of you guys transport them after wrapping?

Finally, what do you guys do with the used plastic?
Mike

I used a single bale wrapper 1 season and if I had to go back I'd quit. I love an inline. With an inline I put on 8 wraps for less cost than 4 on a single. UK did some research with cows eating silages with different numbers of wraps, up to 8 intake increases with # of wraps in a linear fashion. Plastic will physically last into the second winter, alfalfa (and other legume) silages dont hold as well as grasses, the calcium content of the plant buffers the propionic acid.

If silage is too dry it develops a sweet odor (ethanol fermintation (consumes energy), brown colors from heat (which denatures the protein)). Too wet can casue a butyric fermintation (sour rancid butter odor) I've never wrapped any too wet, not sure you can without rain but made some nasty silage a time or two in a silo.

I move mine to where I want to store it and then wrap, cut the plastic to feed. If I'm selling it in season I wrap it at the destination, if selling in winter I usually cut individual bales to haul.

Take a Look at the McHale website.

• McHale Silage Guide

I am a firm believer in small squares. They may make more work, but in the end they are much easier to handle IMO. Sliding around in the mud with a loader tractor trying to get hay in the feeder before a snow storm hits isn't my idea of fun! I much rather climb to the hay mow and throw down what I need..... .....No mud, weather doesn't matter, etc..... ....JMHO.

We have been doing bale silage for about 4 years now, and now we do very little dry hay anymore. Depending on what crop you are baling will have a lot to do with what moisture you bring it up. Legumes need to come up at 30-40% moisture where first cutting grass hays can come up at 50-60% moisture. Of corse the more moisture the quicker you can bale and the heavier the bales will be.

In the dead of summer we can normally mow one evening or night and bale the next evening. If the grass hay gets a little mature you can bale within hours of mowing, you have to watch the moisture to know when to bale, remember this is an art not a science.

Normally you have about 12 to 20 hours after baling to get it in the wrap or it doesnt ensile very good. After you get the plastic on it you are suppose to leave the bales a minimum of three days before you move them again so that they can cook. After that you can move them around on a flat wagon or trailer if you need to. I normally move them on their flat end, and they tend to store better that way too.

Normally you can get two years out of a wrapped bale before the plastic starts to break down and you get holes in the bales. If you are going to keep any longer than that you have to re-wrap them, and that is a pain. You normally should let the bales ensile for a month or so before feeding, normally that is never a problem because you are baling in the summer and feeding in the winter. Bales will keep for a week or so after you take all the plastic off, if you just poke one with a spear say to move it to another location they can keep for several weeks with only a small hole.

We bale 5x5 bales for the most part and they get close to 2000# each. A 4x4 would be maybe 1200# to 1500# depending on your baler and what moisture you are running. Baling wet hay is hard on a round baler, you need to have a fairly modern baler or a silage baler if you are going to do much of it, you will tear an old baler up in a hurry with the extra weight and wet wrapping hay.

We use a bale hugger on a loader to move and stack the bales after they are wrapped. Most modern wrappers can tilt the bales and line them up along the edge of a field very nicely and you dont have to handle them until you feed them. The tube wrappers just put them in a line, but I am not a big fan of tube wrappers for a couple reasons.

Used plastic is always a concern, we take some to the land fill, we burn some in trash piles, but there is no good way to get rid of that stinking wet plastic. That is probably the biggest drawback to wet wrapping hay.

Look at my website, I have a whole page about wet wrapping and some pictures of our operation.

• Shep's World

We normally move the bales before wrapping so it is not a problem for us. I know you guys in the UK wrap a lot more than we do, but it is catching on around here more and more.

Thanks for the info.

In the UK, wrapped bales are usually handled by a grab, not a spear (until it comes to feeding them of course, then you need to use a spear to hold them while you cut the wrapping off) so the silage bales are not punctured.

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