Silage Insights - testimonials
The importance of bale silage to a farmer’s business

Testimonial from Len Farr, UK farmer in Herefordshire

Herefordshire is well known as one of England’s most beautiful counties. Its fertile countryside supports a range of mixed, beef and dairy farming that has made the Wye Valley renowned for a rich agricultural heritage and exports of fine cattle stock, fruit and cider.

Like many of Britain’s famous rural regions, farming in Herefordshire has been going on for generations. Len Farr has run his family’s 120 acre mixed farm on the border between Wales and Herefordshire for over 40 years – farming both beef and sheep. His wife, Angela, has drawn upon the area’s natural beauty to develop a successful holiday-home business, renovating farm out-buildings and barns into beautiful cottages.

Len Farr relies on baling silage for 90% of his forage needs, and sees one of its biggest advantages as the flexibility on timing: “Being able to silage bale one field at a time as it becomes ready, is really useful. With clamped silage, you not only have to have a clamp on your farm, you also have to silage at least 30 acres at one time.”

Len Farr, like many other farmers in Herefordshire, feels baling silage is by far the most popular forage method in the region, and further afield in the UK. This confirms Dow’s recent UK survey into trends in the big bale market, where 98% of respondents baled at least some of their silage.

Indeed, Philip Partridge, on a neighboring Herefordshire dairy farm, says that the major benefit to him of big bale silage is that the bales are easily transportable. This means that he and other farmers can move feed in a very efficient way to where the animals are grazing. It also means the bales are easy to stack and store.

For Herefordshire beef farmer, John Francis, cost is a major factor in choosing big bale silage: “Big baling is something farmers can do themselves, without a huge financial outlay on extra machinery and contractors”. Even though John has invested in a clamp system, he now relies on using bales for half of his 200 acre farm, mainly as a buffer feed system before the pit is opened.

While silage is evidently used by farmers across different agricultural specialisms, dairy cattle tend to eat more grass and silage that those reared for beef, as they have higher energy requirements due to producing milk.

The Herefordshire farmers have some top tips for silage baling. Len Farr recommends storing bales in a sheltered position, stacking on a hardcore base and using a poison bate to control pests such as rats. John Francis recommends always storing out of the wind, near a building and using an underlay sheet.

With a combined 70 years of farming experience between them, these are undoubtedly wise, tried and tested tips!

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