How to Harvest Haylage Bales in Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

Storing silage in round bales (balage) is a commonly used method for preserving forage for use as stock fodder that has a higher nutritional content than hay. Baling at the optimum density is important for ensuring ideal fermentation conditions. In the manuscript, we present the research methodology and the results of the experiment. We did experiments over the density of haylage bales. We investigated the effect of the moisture content in the harvested material, the length of the cut material and the pressing pressure in the round baler. We used the Barenbrug BG-5 forage mix at different moisture content levels (69, 63, 56, 49, and 42%), that was either unchopped or chopped by the round baler’s cutter bars (312 and 183 mm length) and baled at three different pressing pressures (0.9, 1.4, and 1.8 MPa). The results showed that forage density in the bales reached the highest value at a moisture content of 56% and a pressing pressure of 1.8 MPa, with the forage chopped by the cutter bars.