Silage: Potential use as livestock green fodder

When each household only has one dairy cow, how can the nutrition of farmers' milking animals be improved? Wheat or maize straw, along with hay and concentrated diets, are the main fodders available throughout the harsh continental winter. To improve rumen function in cattle, it is absolutely necessary to supplement the diet with green fodder. As a result, winter feed crops should be developed, finding enough feed to maintain good milk production throughout the cold months is a constant challenge for smallholder farmers with constrained production capacity. Due to the increased prices paid for animal feed in the winter, many are obliged to buy hay, concentrates, or silage only to keep their animals alive and are unable to profit. The product created when any green plant material is placed in an area where it can ferment without the presence of air is known as silage. Green feeds are preserved as silage when they are in abundance to meet the demand for high-quality feed during the lean season Lamidi and Ologbose, (2014). Silage is the green, succulent roughage that has been mostly retained in its original state, with little to no loss of the nutritional components of the feed. Ensilage refers to the method of preserving green fodder. The container in which silage is produced is a silo. The most appetising and nutrient-dense silage has a DM (dry matter) of 25–35% and is green and fruity (Sikora et al., 2019)