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Preservatives on round bale silage

----------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------
Date: Tue, 30 May 95 11:44 EDT
From: Lester_R_VOUGH@umail.umd.edu (lv14)
Subject: Preservatives on round bale silage
To: DAIRY-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU

I am hearing more and more concerns about surface mold on round bale
silage.  I had a call last week from a farmer in New York who said that he
had a tremendous amount of mold development on bales last year and has
talked to a number of other farmers in the Northeast who experienced the
same thing.  These bales were wrapped.

He asked several questions, generally to which I didn't have answers:

  1. Why was the problem so much greater last year than previous years?  I
believe last summer was somewhat cooler than normal in much of the region.

  2. What, if anything, can be done to reduce or minimize the problem?  He
asked about applying a "preservative".  What effect would a propionic acid
additive have on fermentation and on the plastic?  Is application of
propionic acid to the surface of the bale beneficial?  Seems to me that I
have heard of someone doing that but I don't want to make that
recommendation based upon my poor memory, i.e. absent-minded professor.

  3. How concerned should we be about the surface mold?  We have fed some
bales that were almost white and gray on the surface at our research farm
and had no problems--maybe we have been lucky.

  4. Any guidelines on inoculants--always beneficial, sometimes(when), rarely?

  5. Any thoughts on the future of balage?  Personally, I view it as an
alternative but the extent of losses that I have seen on farms and that we
have experienced in limited research/demonstration in Maryland is
disturbing.  Granted, some of our research/demonstration work has been to
demonstrate what can happen under worst case conditions, and storage
temperatures in Maryland are far less favorable than farther north, but the
farmer who called from New York indicated that there were considerable
losses last year on some farms in New York and Vermont as well.



Lester R. VOUGH
Forage Crops Extension Specialist
Dept.of Agronomy
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-5821

Email:Lester_R_VOUGH@umail.umd.edu (lv14)
Phone:301-405-1322
FAX:301-314-9041
------------ End Forwarded Message -------------

Lester R. VOUGH
Forage Crops Extension Specialist
Dept.of Agronomy
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-5821

Email:Lester_R_VOUGH@umail.umd.edu (lv14)
Phone:301-405-1322
FAX:301-314-9041