A NEW farming practice gaining traction in the Riverland is seeing more of the region’s growers reaping the rewards being sowed.
Silage production, which sees green foliage crops turn into fodder through fermentation, has been popular in the state’s South-East for years, but has only emerged in the Riverland in recent years.
Fourth generation Loxton farmer Peter Fogden is one of the first in the region to venture into the silaging business, following the year’s unexpected rainfall.
“We got those early rains in February so we decided to plant all our bare hills with rye,” he said.
“We stuck them in when we got a bit of moisture (either on) Anzac Day or (the) Easter weekend, and we thought, ‘oh, we’ll just try to cover our bare hills’, then it grew (and) it didn’t want to stop growing.
“That time of the year (though) it’s too early to make hay or anything with it, and we didn’t want to keep it all for seed, so I said to a mate in the South-East, ‘are you willing to bring your wrapper up?’ and he said, ‘yeah, we’ll give it a go’.
“It’s just exciting that we can actually get enough growth in it to make silage this year because it doesn’t happen very often.”
Mr Fogden and company spent four days baling the rye for silage, and ended up producing 170 to 180 bales out of the 30 hectares of crops that were cut.
Mr Fogden said wrapping it in the plastic rather than rolling the bales up then throwing plastic over the top like it had been performed in the past, meant it let all the air out and enabled farmers to store the silage for longer.
“You can get rid of some of your weeds out in the paddocks– wrap them up and get rid of them – (this way), whereas if you make it for hay, it dries and then the seed drops out of it before you bale it,” Mr Fogden said.
“Here you’re just wrapping it up green, and a lot of the seeds, and there’s a good clean up.
“It turns average hay into good silage because that will just cook in there until it heats up and changes.”
Silage has a multitude of purposes, but is mainly known and utilised among farmer’s grazing systems as a pasture management tool.
Mr Fogden said the fodder made was more valuable than hay, and had shown to have great benefits for cattle when the land underwent drier conditions, which is how he would be using the bales throughout the year.
“We had to do something with (the silage) – you couldn’t let it go to waste because you don’t get good years like this very often,” he said.
“That’s why we decided to put it into silage, and cattle do really well on it.
“They reckon it helps the cattle after harvest, when the paddock gets a bit dry.
“You put a bale of silage out there and it helps their guts get going again.”
Mr Fogden hoped to make some silage every year if conditions allow it, and said if any other farmers were currently interested in or had also partaken in silage production this year, the wrapper would be in Loxton for the next month.