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Faunsdale, AL | Fill and cover 11 concrete stave silos every year here and occasionally refill one with haylage etc, We have been using tarps we have had made for the various sized silos for many years. Lately we haven't been able to get a material that is pliable enough to work really well. We have some old ones that are still flexible after many years use, while some of the new ones are so stiff after one use, they don't lay down smoothly on the silage and that allows air to migrate across the surface. This year we used a piece of silage cover plastic underneath all the tarps to really seal them. It pays to have a good cover! Throwing off a silo and leveling it out for the unloader is a nasty job, making it half as bad is worth a lot! Especially in July when it has been in the silo for nearly a year.
If you consider both the labor and the spoilage from not covering, the cost to purchase and use plastic will be very well repaid! It's just the same as those folks who say you need not cover a bunker silo, just feed the rotten along with the other etc. No one is measuring what it really costs to do it that way. Not covering an upright silo would almost be worse than not covering a bunker in my opinion, because you don't drive over the top of an upright silo and pack it. I have analysed silage in the top 6 feet of of some of our silos even after the rotten was removed and the top few feet fed out, the silage fermentation was still off. (More acetic and propionic and less lactic acids). By the time the sample came back, the unloader was down another 10-15 feet and a second sample showed very good fermentation acid profiles (lots of lactic acid, low acetic and propionic) Neither sample showed any appreciable butyric acid level, it would have been in the silage that was thrown off ahead of time. So you have less desirable fermentation with increased losses even when you don't have obvious spoilage.
Spoilage is always worse around the edges and down a few feet, especially next to the door. There will be very little spoilage in the center of the silage pack under a cover. So we throw off the few inches of surface spoilage and then dig down around the wall about as narrow of a trench as you can stand in if you have to go that deep. Since the part that's deep is usually only next to the door, you don't have to move silage up and out of the trench and across the silo to get it out the door.
Anytime you handle moldy silage, you run the risk of having mold spore toxicity. A dust mask is a very good idea. We don't usually use them, just keep from disturbing the stuff as much as possible as we throw it down the chute, and normally get along fine. Once every few years someone will have a 12 hour case of the worst "flu" you ever had. The kind of illness where you wish you would just go ahead and die to stop the pain in your bones and teeth. Always better by the next morning and no lasting problem. A cover keeps the spoiled silage damp or wet instead of dry and dusty, so that is another advantage.
Silo gas is a short term problem, much more likely to be dangerous the next morning or Monday morning when you go back up to put on cover than when you go back in a few weeks to take it off.. By a month, there's no danger from the silo gas. When you have to go back into a recently filled silo, run the blower to get the gas out. It's heavier than air and can lay down in the silo near the surface.
Edited by ccjersey 1/6/2012 08:45
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kQuestion for upright silos guys.
