How to Make Corn Stalk Silage? Detailed Tutorial on the Latest Technical Methods
Corn stalk silage technology is the preservation of corn stalks that have not yet aged through special processing techniques, so that they can be used as livestock feed in autumn and winter. It can preserve the quality and nutritional content of the feed almost as good as new, allowing livestock to enjoy the greenery of summer and the fragrance of grass in early autumn even in winter. This technology is specifically applied to grasses and legumes.
Harvesting Process
In the agricultural regions of China, when preparing corn silage, the harvesting process used for corn is mostly segmented harvesting, that is, corn plants are cut down by hand, transported by animal power or other transport machinery to the side of the silage facility, then fed manually to a chaff cutter, chopped, and loaded into the silage facility for ensiling. The main features of this harvesting process are that the entire operation is completed in several stages, mainly by manual labor, with high labor intensity and low production efficiency; the silage process generally takes 3 to 5 days. The combined harvesting process, by contrast, uses a dedicated green feed harvester to complete in the field in one pass the cutting, conveying, and chopping of corn plants and the loading of the chopped material into a feed trailer. The trailer loads the feed into the silage facility, and after compaction and sealing, the entire corn silage process is complete.
Raw Material Harvesting
To balance both feed quality and nutritional content, it is best to ensile a mixture of forage grasses that are high in sugar and easy to ensile with legumes that are rich in protein and difficult to ensile. For the silage mixing ratio, grasses and legumes should be 2:1 or 1:1.
Cleaning and Preparation
According to the scale of the silage, choose suitable silage equipment, and clean it before use, removing dirt, leftover raw materials, and so on; areas where soil has fallen off should be repaired.
Determining Water Supplementation
The moisture content of the silage raw material should be 65%; any shortfall must be supplemented to reach that amount. For example: corn stalks with 40% moisture content need water added during ensiling (calculated per 1 ton), 1000×65%-1000×40%=250 kg; the rest can be calculated by analogy. If newly harvested green grass (stalks) has a moisture content exceeding 70%, it should be slightly dried or mixed with substances such as hay meal that have lower moisture content to reduce its moisture to about 65%.