Grass Silage for Pigs

This summer while mowing the lawn, I was contemplating what else I could do with the grass. I was spending time mowing the lawn on our pathways and aside of our driveway and just leaving the clippings there to break down, use mulch and feed to the pigs as supplemental feed, but what else?  

I like to figure out many uses for everything as after a while I run out of things to mulch and the pigs only eat so much grass at a time.

So late this summer, I tried out ensiling them in garbage bags for supplemental winter feed for the pigs.

I mow until the mower bagger is full.

Then I packed 3 mower bagger bags into a single large garbage bag in layers, packing them very tight between layers.     I also sprinkled about a gallon and a half of activated EM-1 microbes in as I packed the grass to get the ensiling process started.  These microbes are a consortium of 3 main types: Lactic Acid bacteria, Brewer's Yeast, and Purple Non-Sulfur Bacteria.  If you look up "Terraganix EM-1" online you can find out a lot more about this, and I will also write more about them as I have time.    I then sat on the bags and squeezed them and twisted them until all the air was out. I attached a couple of photos for your viewing pleasure

One thing I learned from this was that 3 full mower bags of grass weighs about 120 pounds, so the bags are really heavy to move and carry around.  It's more about what you can carry vs. how big a bag of packed grass you can make.

I made 4 bags total this year as an experiment one day.

I put the bags in the barn and kept an eye on them as I didn't know what would happen with the temperatures.  But they never heated higher than ambient temps.  They did build up a little bit of gas but not much as the grass "pickled".

I opened one of them up and there is very, very little mold, it's just nice, sweet smelling silage.  The pigs like it enough, they don't gorge on it but it does give them something to work on here in the winter.  

I will follow up with some pics of the pigs enjoying their silage tomorrow when I feed them another bag.

I am planning on doing this again next year as well, and think the silage could also be used for chickens and our waterfowl for winter supplementation.

Has anybody else played around with this for pigs, cattle, or other critters?

Welcome to the forum!

That looks like the green part of a good compost pile to me.

Have you tried making compost?

Compost is one of the loveliest things that I have seen on this earth.

It is good that you are giving some of that grass to the pigs.

Anne Miller wrote:
That looks like the green part of a good compost pile to me.

Have you tried making compost?

Compost is one of the loveliest things that I have seen on this earth.

Thanks!

Yes, I've made compost... lots of it over the years   The big thing at this point was I didn't have a whole lot of browns to mix in with it, and wanted to experiment.

I will make some composting posts in the future.

I made some silage from grass clippings this summer. I laid out the fresh clippings to dry out a bit before sprinkling some pickle water on them. It was amazing how heavy the bag was with all the grasses packed down tightly.  I only did a cubic ft for experiment and offered a small portion to my chickens. I am worrying that if they eat long strands of silage, they might ball up in the crops. Pigs should handle the silage well being bigger animals. Making silage is a great way to preserve high protein fodder for winter use, in addition to the health benefits from the microbes.

I’m very curious about this!

I don’t really know what silage is.  I remember a foul smelling something as a child, and being told it was silage. It might have been aged chopped corn stalks🤷🏻‍♀️

I wonder if this grass stuff would make good winter feed for goats sheep or yaks, and how does it differ nutritionally from hay.

I made silage for my goats one year,and slowly introduced it to them with a few handfuls at a time  in the hay i was giving them.One little one had too much and it disrupted her  gut fauna and she soon became vitamin b deficient,it took two weeks of vit b shots and hand watering and feeding her and giving probiotics to get her to stand on her own again.Be careful with any new feed introductions,im not sure if pigs would be bothered though.

I bag grass clippings at my place. I put them in 2 places. 2/3 to 3/4 go directly into the chicken coop/run to feed them and maintain the deep bedding. The remainder goes into a holding area near my compost to serve as cover material.

The chickens make this stuff into the most wonderful compost, very quickly.

Hi,

I am very interested in the silage idea as a way to feed my poultry in the winter. I have turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens. I was wondering what your thoughts were on storing the silage in 55 gallon steel drums? I'm working on eliminating plastic from my homestead in the capacity of touching food - mine or my livestock - in any way. I have some questions...
1) Do you have to pack the container all at once, or could you add to it for,..... say, a couple of weeks to fill it as long as you added the product you mentioned between layers?
2) Do the containers of silage need to be kept warm?
3) Did the mold reverse itself or did you remove it?
4) Would this technique work with adding grass and other greens? Like dandelions, comfrey, other edible plants?
5) How much of the product do you add to how much green material?

Thank you for sharing such a great idea!

Luetta
Alaska

Someone else might have more insight but i think if its green it can made into silage,just like making any ferment from vegetables.Fermenting greens  is very similar to making cabbage into sauerkraut.Keep the air away and it should ferment.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I’m very curious about this!

I don’t really know what silage is.  I remember a foul smelling something as a child, and being told it was silage. It might have been aged chopped corn stalks🤷🏻‍♀️

I wonder if this grass stuff would make good winter feed for goats sheep or yaks, and how does it differ nutritionally from hay.

Thekla, it sounds like a rabbit hole to go down to discover the answer to the nutritional differences between hay and silage! Since I'm homebound for the foreseeable future as I'm snowed in, maybe I will dive in as well!  Sounds like a new topic to me, though I haven't searched it yet!

(P.S. I'm here because of the daily ish email! It sounded interesting! )

In a quick search before venturing into the frozen landscape to do outdoor chores, I found this site... https://www.thebeefsite.com/

Hi Deedee!

I guess it would be hard to compare nutritional values between silage and hay, unless you used identical hay to make the silage.

I get even more confounded when I think about what the silage making fermentation is accomplishing.  It might differ from one organism to the next what the products of fermentation are.

I wonder if it is a matter of decreasing the sugar and increasing the protein because of all those bacteria that flourished on the sugars, and now their little “bodies” are part of the nutritional value of the silage.  I imagine all the DNA, all the cell membranes, all the organelles of millions of bacterial cells.

And it pops into my mind that for ruminants, the bacteria in their rumens break the cellulose into fatty acids, and that’s what feeds the goat-cow-sheep-yak.

So maybe that’s what is happening in the ensiling process?  Fatty acid production?

Perhaps I am over complicating the question, and I don’t have the patience with what the search engines have become to research it.  Plus I have chores outside on this winter day.

Stay warm.

Ooooh, that looks like valuable information indeed.

Thank you

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Ooooh, that looks like valuable information indeed.

Thank you

Glad I could help. I find it interesting the differences between corn and drought-stressed corn. I'm sure those already raising some of the bigger (than chickens and rabbits) animals know what those animals' nutritional needs are, and can pick and choose what plants to use.

If in order to create this type of feed requires the addition of another substance to kick-start the fermentation,  what nutrients does it add to the final product,  and does that addition change the nutritional values above and beyond the 2 separate ingredients?

I haven’t done anything but skim the screenshot you posted, and noticed the normal vs drought corn.  Living in the desert, I would be sure to hold back the water !

Not to steal the thread or anything but I am hoping someone with knowledge and experience on silage will answer these questions of mine.

Luetta Robinson wrote:Hi,

I am very interested in the silage idea as a way to feed my poultry in the winter. I have turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens. I was wondering what your thoughts were on storing the silage in 55 gallon steel drums? I'm working on eliminating plastic from my homestead in the capacity of touching food - mine or my livestock - in any way. I have some questions...
1) Do you have to pack the container all at once, or could you add to it for,..... say, a couple of weeks to fill it as long as you added the product you mentioned between layers?
2) Do the containers of silage need to be kept warm?
3) Did the mold reverse itself or did you remove it?
4) Would this technique work with adding grass and other greens? Like dandelions, comfrey, other edible plants?
5) How much of the product do you add to how much green material?

Thank you for sharing such a great idea!

Luetta
Alaska

Thanks for the great discussion!

To answer your questions:

1.) Yes, a 55 gallon barrel would work, or a plastic pickle barrel.  The important thing is it needs to be air tight.  I agree with removing plastics... I don't like buying plastic bags and then tossing them, this is more of an experiment.  In the future I think I will go with a pickle barrel since I don't need to throw it away and I can roll it.  These bags are really heavy to carry!
2.) I would think they would need to be kept warm.... but, I'm learning, nope!... even at 20 degrees F (-7C) they are not frozen.  They are not even close to freezing on the on the edges at this temperature.  They are stored in a barn, but that's open to the weather (all the windows are out, doors are off, etc.)
3.) I did not remove any mold.  I am dousing it with activated Effective Microorganisms (Look up Terraganix EM) right when I make it to try to avoid mold.
4.) I would think this would work great with other greens, so long as they are not puncturing the bag, I'd also not ensile a whole bunch of one type of plant, rather, naturally pull it in.  So if I'm gathering grass by my comfrey, toss the comfrey in front of the mower and bag it up.  My lawn for instance is mainly grass, with maybe 10% clover and dandelions, chickory, and plantain mainly.  
5.) I added about 1 1/2 gallons of activated EM I made to each contractor bag with about 4 oz EM-1, 4 oz blackstrap molasses, and the rest of the 1 1/2 gallon (40 oz) (unchlorinated) water from our well.  I'd say the bag was 1/2 full so it's probably 30? gallons of grass clippings in there, at least.  

I'm transitioning my property to more of a silvopasture/food forest setup, hence my interest in silage and experimentation now as we go more towards beef cattle and ruminants I'd like to use this instead of hay.  The hay can get easily rained on here and with the trees, well, it won't dry too well either so I wanted a way to make feed more reliably (eventually).

Regarding the Vitamin B Deficiency some thoughts... well, one element of the EM-1 I'm introducing when ensiling the grass is brewer's yeast which is very high in Vitamin B-12, so I'm hopeful that would not be a problem.  I sort of let the animals choose what to eat and give them as much variety as possible and let them figure it out.  Especially with nutritional values of feeds, it's useful as a starting point but even corn is not corn; the older varieties will have more protein than modern hybrid types so I let the animals choose.

I have fed the silage to our waterfowl and they clean it up, especially in winter.

Improvements I'll be making:
1.) Use pickle barrels.  This will help me roll them and protect them.  It's hard dealing with a heavy bag of grass while trying not to tear the bag.
2.) (lightly) salt the silage with sea salt for minerals.
3.) It's a pain to mix the EM in while packing the bags.  So instead, I will spray it on the lawn grass before ensiling it to ensure a good mix as it's being bagged.   I think this would also require less EM-1 this way.

Attached is a photo of the bag dumped for the pigs a few days ago, on a 20 degree F morning.: