There are two schools of thought with silage.
One involves its nutritional advantage over hay, particularly in terms of it being a feed of much higher quality.
However, that is offset by it selling for less due to the higher water content which reduces feed per tonne transported.
Its storage advantages over hay are made obvious by the plastic wrap but ideally production on-farm reduces both the cost and risk of damaging the wrapping in transport.
Although Erin Kelli at Kotta mainly produces hay for a larger profit, she does take opportunity in the event of any wet weather to make silage.
Last year she produced oaten, hay, vetch and lucerne silage.
“You take opportunities from the rain,” Erin said.
“Farmers cannot always stick to a rule because the weather doesn’t always play that game.
“If you do that, then you won’t make it, and we are often sent in to rescue a farmer’s ruined crop.”
Erin works for Paul ‘Quinny’ Quinn and, with Paul’s two sons Michael and Christopher, they start contract work at Deniliquin each growing season and work their way south, with 36-hour ‘days’ quite common.
This year, the farm is growing vetch specifically for silage.
“And the first cut off our lucerne always goes to silage,” she said.
“But silage does not pay per ton as well as hay — so it’s generally not worth a lot.”
Adam Whipp from AW Ag Contracting is widely known for his high quality fodder in which he takes great pride, having successfully muscled into the fodder industry.
Mr Whip produces silage on his own land and contracts his services to as far away as South Australia.
The majority of his production is in northern Victoria and the southern Riverina, and he takes advantage of an associate’s export processing plant in southern NSW to export cereal hay to China and Taiwan.
“Our season has a big spread over time and area,” Adam said.
“We produce from September through to November and produce pasture, cereal and vetch silage.”
He also runs a 300-head dairy farm in Timmering on 200 ha, with fodder production on adjoining land.
“People take the option of silage over hay because there is less risk,” Adam said.
“Last year we grew a lot of maize for silage when the water was cheaper but the yield was down because the summer wasn’t all that hot.
“Which was a lot better than the year before when flooding made it difficult to access.”
Erin took Country News for a tour of the different fodder crops starting their pre-spring surge, having moved that morning a mob of sheep from a lucerne paddock, mid-graze.
“We get the sheep to really flog this lucerne down as low as possible,” she said.
“And then we spray it to die it back to the surface — and that’s something that scares a lot of farmers.
“But it grows back with its softer lusher young leaves.”
Her passion for the business comes with its serious side.
“The amount of fatalities in farming is huge and I don’t want to come across as someone silly who’s making fun of these blokes.
“Silage making is also so important, it’s so easy to kill a whole herd of cattle.
“We once baled another farm which had been fertilised with chicken manure but there were dead chickens in the beautiful lucerne so the whole cut was unusable.”
Erin is also ‘a bit of science buff’ which she attributes to her first job at a knackery, but these days is called upon to help other growers analyse their silage quality tests.
“I actually got the marks to go do vet science at Geelong but I turned it down to do nursing,” she said.
“But nursing isn’t really my passion so I got back into farming, although I have put a few bandages on around here.”
The farm produces typical rounds of silage, but the biggest silage production is that of large rows of squares cured under tarps, which are loaded straight into chopper trucks and sold directly to farmer feed pits.
Among the machinery at rest for mid-winter maintenance and cleaning is the Swing Max double baler — one of three in Australia — which can arc an arm out for widely spaced windrows.
Erin said the 2019 drought resulted in enormous output with 15 semi-truckloads heading out each day, every day, into NSW and more than a dozen balers running for nine months.
“So many people sold their water rights so now those farms don’t have anything during drought unless they buy-back.
“But we still have our rights so we pay less.”
Despite selling everything they had during the drought, she makes every effort to please each customer.
“My rule is ‘don’t say no to any customer’, so I do everything I can to find them something.”