# baleage/sileage?



## francismilker (Jan 12, 2006)

What's the difference between baleage and silage? I'm not familiar with what baleage is unless it's something that's called a different name in my area.


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

Baleage is made in bales. Usually plastic wrapped big squares or rounds.
Silage is made in a silo.

Same stuff except the silage is chopped and finer.

Fermented hay.

Last year we made bucketlage.


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## Up North (Nov 29, 2005)

Like sammy d says, baleage is where a big square baler or specially equipped round baler makes the hay into packages at a higher moisture level so it will ferment. Then a wrapping machine seals the package in white plastic to form an oxygen free environment which is critical to proper fermentation.
Generally done for dairy stock or high return livestock ventures, as the machinery required to properly package and handle baleage is a much larger investment than for dry hay. And there are many opportunities to do it wrong or have spoilage between standing crop and getting stored feed to the cow with a baleage system.

Silage is a general term that includes any plant matter stored in an oxygen limiting environment to ferment. Haylage is common, same plants as you would make for dry hay. Corn Silage is the entire corn plant including ears and grain chopped and stored. But you can make silage out of Peas&Oats, Milo, Barley, and any number of crops as long as they can be machine harvested.


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## NICC08 (Jan 2, 2007)

The prior posts were great. 
Heres what I'll add, we feed baleage in big squares and love it. No we don't make it ourselves, but buy it from a neighbor. It's excellent quality forage the stuff is still green when a guy opens the bale. The cows love it, and its a good source of fiber thus we feed no hay in our ration. We achieve 70-80 lbs/day avg.Drawbacks are it ain't really easy to feed, so we are looking at a vertical TMR to get around this. The plastic wrap is a pain to dispose of. 

Just a bit of my opinion on baleage.
Jake


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## JeffNY (Dec 13, 2004)

Baleage is easier to put up than advertised. When I first looked into it, it seemd like a tricky feed to put up. It is actually easier than chopped grass (Grass Silage). The large square baleage requires a BIG tractor to run the large square baler, usually 200+hp, that has a strong driveline. Its mostly a weight issue. However with square baleage IMO would be better than round, as it would be denser, and you could stack them.


Round bale baleage doesn't require much HP. You can also get away with less tractors when doing baleage. Technically you could do it with 2. You have one to wrap, one to bale, cut, and handle the bales. You can also do it yourself. I did it before. Baled, then wrapped. Took me 4 hours total time to do 70 bales. But I was also traveling from the field back to the edge of the field. This coming season, I will be wrapping at my storage sites, should allow me to do 40 an hour, so overall time will be cut down, perhaps allowing me to do a large volume in a day.


The wrappers come in different flavors. There are tubers, which wrap in a continuous tube, bale against bale. The machine moves along as it is wrapping, propelled by pushing the bales along against the tube as it wraps. With these, you can do a significant amount of hay in an hour. The rate is upwards of 100bales an hour, its actually fast enough that you have to keep up with the machine. Only downfall is when you open a tube, you expose the entire tube.

The other type are the individual wrappers. They do make large square wrappers, and round bale wrappers. Ours wraps them individually. It is self loading, and computer controlled. I can pull the lever, it locks in, rotates while wrapping, then stops at a set number of rotations. Typically 16 revolutions gets you a good wrap. However I found on heavier stuff, 24 revolutions put a good thick wrap on the bales, and keep it green (almost as green as it is baled). The plastic comes in 30"x5000' rolls @ 1mil thickness.


As I mentioned, some bales come out green. I had green manure in the middle of winter from the balege. Usually you get that with pasture, well this was with the baleage. The key to making good baleage is baleing around 50% moisture, and wrapping it well. I also found cutting the feed young helps considerably. I plan on starting mid-may, even if its only 2' tall. I am after high protein feed. When I was feeding 21% baleage, the cows milked really well, as soon as I ran out of the fuel, and went to 12% stuff, they dropped accordingly. So the goal is high quality baleage, and it shouldn't be hard. 


It can have its cons, however there is no other feed if done right that can beat baleage. The protein loss is extremely low, overall feed quality loss is down under 2%. With silos, and trenches its 20%+. Now there is baleage called silage baleage. This is made with a round baler that cuts up the hay into fine pieces, much like a forage harvester. You could literally open a bale, and shovel it to the animals. However with the long stem stuff, which is better, you pitch it to them.

The cons I have found, and it is the only con. Is birds. They love to attack the bales. I have some out in the fields that were attacked, I have one that looks like someone cut it open. If a bale is opened, and had sufficent moisture in the hay, it does get nasty. The remedy for this is stack the feed in a group, and away from hedgerows. But this is the only con, and can be fixed. 


Its good stuff, it makes milk, I know of a farmer that sold his forage harvestor, got away from corn silage, went to baleage. He feeds corn meal, and baleage, and makes more milk feeding baleage and corn meal, then he did feeding corn silage. If you can handle the bales, its worth it.


Jeff


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

We put up grass silage one year. The cows ate it like candy but oh did it make a stink. The juices leaked out of the silo and got into the ground. You could smell grass silage for years after when it rained.

I really like haylage which is why we tried bucketlage last year the cow love it.
Never tried balage but like the low HP requirement. Go through a lot of deisel putting it in the silo for sure.


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