Silage production in Australia has more than doubled since the early 1990s.
Silage provides an opportunity to store high-quality forage that can maintain high levels of animal production, increase enterprise flexibility and create new marketing opportunities.
The need for producers to increase productivity and reduce costs has been a driving force behind the increased use of silage.
On many farms silage-making is now a regular annual operation.
Drought and concerns about climate change are causing other producers to consider the advantages of silage for longer term storage.
Improvements in silage-making technology and the availability of efficient silage-handling machinery have encouraged the adoption of silage on many farms.
Improved silage technology
Technological advances have enabled farmers to more consistently and more easily produce high-quality silage to feed to their livestock. These include:
- Advances in knowledge that have improved silage-making practises (for example, the importance of rapid wilting and ensuring an airtight seal).
- Improvements in silage-making technology (for example, plastics and inoculants).
- Machinery developments to improve the efficiency of silage production (for example, mowers, mower conditioners, tedders and precision chop forage harvesters).
- More storage options (chopped, baled, bulk or individual sealing) that provide producers with greater flexibility of their silage system.
- Improved mechanisation of silage feedout systems which can significantly reduce labour requirements and wastage.
- Availability of machinery that allows silage to be fed in mixed rations.
Potential benefits of silage
The reasons a farmer makes silage will vary between farms and include personal preferences. The main reasons include:
- The need to improve pasture utilisation and increase productivity per hectare.
- The valuable role for silage as a pasture management tool.
- Reduced reliance on irrigation water and the need to maximise production per megalitre used.
- Capacity to cut earlier in the season and produce a higher quality product compared to hay production.
- Ability to spread the harvesting period over a longer period than for hay.
- Reduced losses of dry matter and quality during field and harvesting operations and reduced susceptibility to adverse weather compared to hay.
- Market demand for consistency of supply and quality of animal product (for example, milk or meat).
- Silage can be a high-quality supplement for ‘out-of-season’ production.
- Ability to grow a variety of crops for silage production (for example, maize, sorghum or cereals). This diversity can increase farm productivity to levels higher than possible with pasture alone.
- Suitability of silage for long-term storage of high quality feed for drought or flood reserves.
- Potential to salvage high-quality forage from drought or frost-affected crops (for example, canola or winter cereals).
– From NSW DPI.