Cows eating silage in a barn
What are some of the feed-out systems available?
Feed-out systems can be very basic and low cost, from self-feeding from a pit (with no transport component), feeding whole bales in the paddock, through to expensive integrated systems used on large feedlots or dairy enterprises.
Transporting the silage to the animals
Baled silage
Baled silage is usually removed from the storage site using forks or a spike mounted on the front of a tractor (front-end loader) or to the three-point linkage. One or two round bales can be carried at any time with these attachments.
If there is a reasonable distance between storage and feedout, using a truck or trailer to increase the number of bales carried will substantially improve the work rate. This will save time, particularly when a large number of bales need to be fed, in several paddocks.
The relatively large farm sizes in Australia make efficient delivery systems essential, particularly if silage is being fed to several groups of animals.
An Irish study compared transporting one or two bales with a tractor or five bales on a self-loading trailer to find the number of bales that could be transported in an hour.
While trucks and trailers can be used to efficiently transport bales, they have the disadvantage that separate equipment is needed to feed out the bales once they are delivered to the feed site.
There is equipment available that is specifically designed to chop round and square bales at the time of feed-out. The chopped silage is then delivered into a windrow, trough, pad or bale feeder.
The advantage of this system is the reduced particle length and increased accessibility (feeding space). Chopping aims to increase animal production by increasing intake. However, because the chop length is still relatively long (similar to that produced by a forage wagon) any advantage is likely to be greater for cattle than for sheep.
Any improvement in sheep production will probably be due to increased accessibility.
Anecdotal evidence from studies at Cowra, NSW, suggests that baled silage, chopped just before feeding may be less aerobically stable than unchopped bales or fine chop silage produced from the same material.
The most likely reason is the increased rate of aerobic spoilage caused by vigorous aeration of the silage during chopping.
Tractor with a bale spike fitted
Chopped silage
Silage removed with a shear grab or block cutter holds together as a block and it can either be fed out whole, similar to a large square bale, or fed out through a mixer wagon or forage wagon.
Forage wagons or feed carts are used for feeding out chopped silage. They have moving floors and convey the forage to Mixer wagons vary in capacity and handle chopped silage from pits, bunkers and tower silos.
They can be mounted on either a tractor-drawn trailer or a truck. Some models contain a series of blades along one or more of the augers that are capable of chopping baled silage and hay. The augers mix the roughage with the other feed ingredients, usually concentrates.
Mixer wagons can be fitted with load cells so that the correct quantity of different feeds can be monitored. The silage or mixed ration is then delivered into a trough or windrow.
In highly mechanised and intensive feeding systems, the transport of silage from the storage to troughs or feedbunks can be fully mechanised. A series of augers transport the silage or mixed ration, unloading at the appropriate location.
These systems combine well with tower silos where the silage is mechanically removed from the bottom of the silo.
