High-Quality Silage Management
alternative practice names:
Forage Management; Silage Harvest; Storage and Feedout
Silage refers to high-moisture crops, such as corn and grass-legume mixes, stored in an anaerobic environment and supporting fermentation. Proper silage preservation involves rapid anaerobic fermentation and exclusion of air/oxygen to optimize the formation of acids (especially lactic acid) in order to preserve nutrients (protein, digestible fiber, starch) and minimize spoilage losses. This process helps to retain the crop’s nutritional value and enables producers to store high-quality feed for year-round use. High-level management, infrastructure, and specialty equipment are necessary to grow, harvest, store, and feed silage efficiently.
High-quality silage management requires comprehensive knowledge of crop maturity, harvest conditions, harvesting equipment, storage facilities, and feedout practices:
Harvest timing: Crop maturity and dry matter content at the time of harvest impacts nutrient retention, fermentation processes, and, ultimately, the nutritional value of the silage, which directly impacts the growth and performance of the animals consuming it.
Silage packing: Once harvested, the silage must be packed quickly and tightly to exclude oxygen. Effective compaction is essential to initiating anaerobic fermentation, which preserves the silage's quality.
Silage storage: Silage storage should minimize air and water exposure, which are the primary causes of spoilage. Separating different cuttings or crop types will contribute to quality overall feed management.
Silage feedout: Managing oxygen exposure during feedout is critical to preventing secondary fermentation and dry matter losses. Effective bunk face management and a proper feedout rate minimize oxygen infiltration.
When used, in what regions in the U.S. is the practice found:
Northwest, West, Upper Midwest, Southwest, Northeast, Southeast
FARM SIZE
When used, typically found on farms of the following sizes:
All Sizes

Practice Benefits
Minimizes losses and waste: By reducing spoilage and ensuring better preservation of silage, producers can maximize the quantity and quality of feed available.
Improved cow performance: Improved forage management will produce forages with higher digestibility and nutritional value and promote greater dry matter intake.
Lower input costs: By improving the quality of home-grown forages, farmers can reduce reliance on costly commercial feed ingredients, thus lowering input costs.

Implementation Insights
Site-specific or Farm-specific requirements

Climate: No specific regional requirements exist, but the process becomes more complicated in areas with frequent rainy weather, which can prohibit harvesting at optimal times.
Field size and location: Smaller and more spread-out field sizes can further complicate the harvesting process.
Required Capital Expenditures (CapEx)

Harvest equipment: A variety of harvest equipment is necessary to harvest forage. Investing in the right-sized equipment for the farm’s scale enables farmers to harvest more fields at peak nutritional quality.
Silage storage facilities: The type of silage storage system chosen—whether bunkers, cement pads, or silage bags—represents a significant capital expense. Larger farms often shift to bunkers or piles as they provide scalability and versatility, while smaller operations may rely on silos or bags. Additional infrastructure designed to collect leachate may be necessary to reduce environmental impacts. See Silage Leachate Mitigation and Control.
Packing and covering equipment: Proper silage packing is critical to eliminating oxygen and ensuring high-quality fermentation. Capital investments in heavy equipment, such as tractors with loaders or specialized silage packers, may be necessary to achieve the requisite compaction outcomes.
Feedout systems: Specialized machinery, such as silage defacers, remove silage and reduce oxygen exposure at the bunk face with greater precision.
Required Operational Expenditures (OpEx)

Plastic covers and weights: Farms experience recurring costs for plastic sheets to seal silage piles and for weights, such as tires, to secure the covers and prevent air and moisture infiltration.
Additives and inoculants: Additives and inoculants can promote proper fermentation and preserve nutritional quality.
Implementation Considerations

Timing and weather: Grasses, legumes, and grass-legume mixed stands have a relatively short harvest window; crops will accumulate increasing amounts of lignin in their stems after head or blossom, and lignin is poorly digestible. Harvesting all fields at the appropriate maturity can be challenging, especially when weather can cause harvest delays.
Labor: Coordinating a team of operators and technicians requires significant training and leadership. Skilled labor is essential during the concentrated harvest window. Attention to detail is also critical, such as knowing when to wait for haylage dry matter to increase or adjusting harvesters for better kernel processing.
Custom operators: Custom operators can further complicate the process. Farmers may not be able to optimize forage quality if they are dependent on the schedules of custom operators.
Equipment: A significant amount of equipment is required during harvest. Equipment must be well-maintained and updated to ensure efficient operation and avoid potential breakdowns during critical harvest periods.
Financial Considerations and Revenue Streams
PROFIT POTENTIAL
There are no financial programs to incentivize better silage management. However, feeding high-quality homegrown forages may improve animal health and productivity and also replace more costly purchased ingredients typically included in dairy rations.
FINANCIAL RESOURCES, TOOLS, AND CASE STUDIES
Additional Resources
Article: Corn Silage Harvest Timing (Ohio State University)
Guide: Silage Management Technical Guide: Technical advice on creating and maintaining high-quality silage
Report: Managing Forage in Silage Bags (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Report: Monitoring Kernal Processing During Harvest (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Report: Silage and Haylage Production (North Carolina State University)

Environmental Impacts
LOWERS FARM GREENHOUSE GAS FOOTPRINT
High-quality silage management may reduce a farm's greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint in many ways. Improving the quality, digestibility, and nutritional values of forages may improve feed efficiency and reduce reliance on purchased feed concentrates, which often have a higher GHG footprint.¹ In addition, forages with higher fiber digestibility offer greater energy density and can increase dry matter intake and milk, reducing GHG emissions per unit of milk (emission intensity).²
Although there is currently limited scientific research directly evaluating the environmental impact of feed centers, high-quality silage management has been shown to significantly reduce total farm shrink,³ often by a substantial margin. By decreasing feed waste, farms can reduce the need for additional feed purchases and production, which lowers the associated environmental footprint, including the GHGs generated from feed production, transportation, and processing. This indirect reduction in resource use contributes to lowering a farm’s overall GHG emissions and improves sustainability.
See research highlights below:
Van Middelaar et al. (2020) found that reducing the maturity stage of grass and grass silage can have significant environmental benefits by lowering GHG emissions, particularly CH₄, from dairy cows. When grass is harvested at an earlier stage, it has higher nutritional quality, which improves digestibility and shifts the rumen fermentation process, leading to lower CH₄ production per unit of milk. This strategy also slightly reduces feed intake due to the higher energy density, further contributing to reduced GHG emissions.
Van Gastelen et al. (2019) conducted a review of existing literature and concluded that high-quality forage can improve digestibility by 25% and reduce enteric CH₄ production by 19%.
IMPROVES WATER QUALITY
Improved silage management reduces leachate formation.⁴ See Silage Leachate Mitigation and Control.
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¹ Increasing the proportion of concentrates in a ruminant's diet typically reduces CH₄ emissions; this impact may offset the reduction in GHG footprint associated with feed production (Aguerre et al. 2011). In addition, high-quality silage production can require more fuel (associated with additional cuttings) and more commercial fertilizer to produce, thus increasing the forage production footprint (Henriksson et al. 2014).
² Improvements in forage quality, such as feeding more digestible grass or replacing forage types with corn silage, have been shown to significantly enhance the digestibility of feed. The increase in digestibility results in more efficient nutrient absorption, reducing the amount of undigested material that ferments in the rumen and consequently lowering CH₄ emissions. Enhanced digestibility also shortens the retention time of feed in the rumen, further decreasing CH₄ production, as shown across multiple experiments included in the analysis (van Gastelen et al., 2019)
³ Shrink is defined by Dutton (1998) as “the percentage of feed on a farm that is not accounted for by the rations consumed by the animals for which it is intended.” Shrink can occur due to a variety of factors, including wind, wildlife (such as birds and rodents), and moisture leading to spoilage. Brouk (2009) expanded this definition by adding other contributors to shrink, such as errors in delivery weight, feed discarded due to contamination, feed dispersed by tires and vehicle tracking, and inaccuracies during the mixing process. These losses may represent 5-30% of the feed purchased by the farm (Brouk 2010).
⁴ Leachate can form during silage storage, especially if the corn or alfalfa is harvested too wet. Silage leachate has a very high biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). As little as one gallon of silage leachate can lower the oxygen levels in 10,000 gallons of water to a level that could kill fish.
REFerences

Alignment with FARM Program
This practice is not included in the FARM program.
Contents
We're always eager to update the website with the latest research, implementation insights, financial case studies, and emerging practices. Use the link above to share your insights.
We're always eager to update the website with the latest research, implementation insights, financial case studies, and emerging practices. Use the link above to share your insights.
Silage refers to high-moisture crops, such as corn and grass-legume mixes, stored in an anaerobic environment and supporting fermentation. Proper silage preservation involves rapid anaerobic fermentation and exclusion of air/oxygen to optimize the formation of acids (especially lactic acid) in order to preserve nutrients (protein, digestible fiber, starch) and minimize spoilage losses. This process helps to retain the crop’s nutritional value and enables producers to store high-quality feed for year-round use. High-level management, infrastructure, and specialty equipment are necessary to grow, harvest, store, and feed silage efficiently.
High-quality silage management requires comprehensive knowledge of crop maturity, harvest conditions, harvesting equipment, storage facilities, and feedout practices:
Harvest timing: Crop maturity and dry matter content at the time of harvest impacts nutrient retention, fermentation processes, and, ultimately, the nutritional value of the silage, which directly impacts the growth and performance of the animals consuming it.
Silage packing: Once harvested, the silage must be packed quickly and tightly to exclude oxygen. Effective compaction is essential to initiating anaerobic fermentation, which preserves the silage's quality.
Silage storage: Silage storage should minimize air and water exposure, which are the primary causes of spoilage. Separating different cuttings or crop types will contribute to quality overall feed management.
Silage feedout: Managing oxygen exposure during feedout is critical to preventing secondary fermentation and dry matter losses. Effective bunk face management and a proper feedout rate minimize oxygen infiltration.
Practices and technologies
High-Quality Silage Management
alternative practice name:
Forage Management; Silage Harvest; Storage and Feedout