May 14, 2010

Making good hay during the rainy season can be tough. There never seems to be enough dry days in a row. If you’re facing this frustration, consider harvesting your alfalfa as haylage instead of as dry hay.

Making good haylage isn’t as simple as just chopping wet alfalfa and dumping it into a bunker, however. It takes skill, planning, and the three M’s — moisture, microbes, and metabolites — to do it successfully.

Alfalfa haylage should be about 65% moisture when stored in a bunker. Overly wet haylage often produces a sour fermentation and sometimes can produce toxins. Dry haylage will heat and reduce both protein and energy digestibility. When stored at the right moisture, along with proper chopping and packing, alfalfa haylage can ferment correctly and become well preserved.

Fermentation also requires microbes and the right metabolites, especially easily fermented carbohydrates. Alfalfa will ferment more rapidly and preserve better if extra silage microbes are added as an inoculant. Add the inoculant —- either dry or liquid — at the chopper for thorough mixing instead of in the truck or wagon, or at the bunker.

One weakness of using alfalfa as a silage is its low concentration of sugars or starch for the microbes to ferment. This can be overcome easily by mixing a bushel of cracked corn or 50 pounds of molasses with each ton of alfalfa haylage at the bunker.

Wet weather makes hay making frustrating, haylage may be an option that works for your operation.

Bruce Anderson
Extension Forage Specialist