TOBA TEK SINGH: Farmers, especially small dairy farm owners, are turning to silage feed in Toba Tek Singh, abandoning fresh fodder and cottonseed-cakes, to feed their animals.

Silage is fermented, high-moisture stored fodder which is prepared with grass and traditional fodder crops but these days silage fodder is prepared by chopping maize plants with raw maize ears.

They hire silage machines from Faisalabad or other areas at Rs5,000 per 12 hours.

The machine crushes an acre of maize crop in three hours. One acre crop makes about 22,500 kilo fodder.

The chopped silage fodder is dumped in earthen, airtight pits.

Plastic sheets are also used inside the pits around the silage fodder to block the passage of air from them.

A dairy farmer of Chak 322-JB, Rana Mudassar Iqbal, told Dawn that after 40 days, the fodder is ready to be used. The stored fodder’s shelf life is one to two years which offers full protein to the animals.

He said an adult animal consumed 25 kilo silage fodder per day which was much economical than other fodder crops or the feeds sold by the feed manufacturers.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2016