The presence of plastic silage wrap will be of great and utmost importance once you know how tricky it is to produce quality silage. A wrapper is what it takes to come up with the freshest batch of silage as it seals the fermented plant materials in a rather airtight compartment, preventing harmful bacteria, oxygen, and moisture from entering and causing spoilage.
Once the silage turns into a pile of mushy trash, there is no going back. Your animals have lost their chance of enjoying a delicious meal for a given period as a result. Keep reading on to find out how something as simple and seemingly trivial as plastic wrap can be the starting point of a very successful animal-rearing business.
contents
What’s Silage?
First thing first, let’s start by talking about what silage is. In laymen’s terms, silage is a term referring to livestock feed that’s prepared through the fermentative process. The practice of fermenting forages and feeding the resulting products to cattle is an age-old tradition, tried and trusted for supplying nutrients for the animals kept on a farm. Cattle are ruminants.
Ruminants possess a row of stomachs, with the first chamber being the site wherein the fermentative digestion process takes place. The partially digested food will then be regurgitated back into the animal’s mouth for a second chewing. The material has now reached a consistency that’s suitable for the next stomach to continue processing, and it is easier for the entire digestive tract to absorb the whole nutrients. Mammals like cattle lack the enzyme essential in breaking down cellulose in plant-based food.
The animals ferment the food themselves so their body can gain access to a slew of nutrients they require to grow. Fermentation inside the gut produces acids that can break down the fibers of plant materials into smaller constituents, which will be absorbed by the cattle. Farmers take this principle and conduct the fermentation outside the cattle’s stomach so the animals find it even easier to digest the food. And only a plastic silage wrap is capable of giving protection and those much-needed preservation properties to the fermented feed.
How a Plastic Silage Wrap Can Contribute to the Improvement of Your Business
If you are wondering why the feed requires extra maintenance given to it, it’s because silage is a delicate matter. As the mixture reaches a certain desired texture and volume, the fermentative, sadly, doesn’t stop. As long as there are bacteria within the content, the process continues.
Sealing the silage inside a wrapper at this stage will cause the feed to stop its process, thanks to it being cut from the oxygen supply. Without a proper plastic silage wrap, oxygen can access the silage, oxidizing the materials further. The batch is now rotten, and there’s no way the animals want to eat it.
Cut crops are stored inside a plastic silage wrap. Dry hay will be protected against water and moisture, which will spoil it. Damp materials can also be stored in such a wrapper to jumpstart ensilaging.
Once the aerobic fermentation stops and turns into anaerobic, the bacteria process the whole plant parts without the presence of oxygen. That’s why the moment oxygen manages to seep inside; the whole thing turns into a disaster as the bacteria revert to using the available oxygen to ferment sugar into acids.
How to Utilize Plastic Silage Wrap Further
Another good thing about using a plastic silage wrap is the extra defense against intruders and convenient transport. The silage contained within the wrap isn’t exposed to the outside, so it won’t invite varmints such as rodents and birds. These two animal groups love stealing from parts of the silage part as they view it as their extra source of free food.
As the feed is contained within a plastic silage wrap, you can easily move it around without worrying about parts of it falling all over the ground. The products kept in a plastic silage wrap can be easily mounted onto a truck for transporting to another place.
If you wish to find the best wrapping product for your silage, Silopak is the right place to start from. We provide you with a variety of wrapping materials that you can choose from based on your current needs. Don’t hesitate to drop by our official website and ask anything you have on your mind at the moment.