making haylage on a small scale ?

blowin · making haylage on a small scale ?

I am sure I have seen a comment about this on the forum but can't find it . I have an area of wild grassland to clear and wonder whether it would be worth the effort of saving the stuff in view of the shortage of hay this year . The vegetation is very mixed -- long dry grass / thick wet grass / wildflowers etc etc but nothing totally indigestible like rushes , or poisonous AFAIK .
All the work will have to be done by hand .
Would you bother ? and if yes , what would you do ? Let it dry for a couple of days ( haha ) then stuff it in bags with as few holes as possible then weigh it all down ? Would you add anything eg molasses ?
Much more important -- can you feed it to pigs without turning them blue or whatever else seems to happen if you give them the "wrong" food Question

wayland

Hi Blowin. I did post about making silage from lawn clippings sometime back. Which worked very well. I have bagged up some more to complete the experiment. As to your field full of rank herbage you could make haylage from it but it would not be that gooder quality me thinks. I would top it and make silage out of the regrowth. I would most definitely put it to some good use. If you are going to use fertilizer bags I would line them with bin liners first to help keep the air our. A small quantity like this will spoil easy if it is not compressed enough and completely sealed. As to feeding it to the pigs!. I would only feed it in small quantities and then mixed with some dry feed like flaked maize etc. With all those wild plant types in this field it may well be more suited to goats. Keep us posted mate. With all this good weather you may still get it bailed and feed it to the cattle perhaps.