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Engineer says bags beat bunkers & silos

A product engineer says storing feed in bags has several advantages over bunkers and silos.  Randy Clark from Ag-Bag by RCI tells Brownfield anytime stored forage is exposed to oxygen or other environmental influences like severe temperature changes, there will be dry matter losses. “Typically, they’re an invisible loss, something that unless you’re measuring exactly what you’re putting in and exactly what you’re pulling out, it’s hard to quantify it and it’s hard to visualize it.”

Clark says he’s had clients that measured dry matter losses between bunkers and bags and switched to using only using bags because it stretches their feed supply while maintaining quality. “Most dairies in spring struggle to get to the first crop alfalfa. If you can save 10% dry matter loss through the winter months with a bagging storage system, you just stretched your alfalfa supply 10%. You might have gained almost a month. That might carry you past that first crop so (the) first crop can ferment, and then you’re into fresh feed again.”

Clark says along with better feed quality, using bags improves safety because farmworkers are not dealing with silage piles and the dangers near the face of the pile.  He says with bags, people are also not working 80 feet in the air on silo machinery and they’re less likely to be exposed to deadly silo gases.