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David Phillips is both a farmer and contractor, based in Brecon in South Wales. He farms 200 ha, carrying 900 breeding ewes and 50 breeding cows plus their calves, which are sold as stores at 14 months. "All the bales we make are four-foot round bales; we make around 800 bales for our own purposes each year and around 8000 bales for farms in the area. The reason most people, including me, use bales is because they are flexible, easy to use and we can take cuts of silage as and when we need to. "Many of us do not have clamps. On our farm we make sure the bales are stored properly on hardcore, but when that site's full we store the bales on the edges of fields. We wrap the bales four times, which is the standard. We've seen bales keep fine for a couple of years with that, and we tend to get little spoilage. "We wilt the grass for 24 hours before baling to keep the silage as dry as possible. We don't use an additive. We've just bought a chopper-baler and the stock much prefer the bales it makes – they find it easier to get hold of the feed and intakes have gone up as a result." --------------- Losses of net energy are inevitable during the fermentation of sugar to lactic acid. However all other losses such as residual respiration, silage effluents, mal-fermentation and aerobic reactions during storage and extraction can be avoided to a great extent. Read more |
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