Yes, you can keep your dairy feeds mould-free this wet season

“The rains are causing havoc to my cattle feeds. How do I deal with this problem?” One of our readers from Cheptiret reached out to us on email. Today I will address this concern.

During heavy rains, conservation of fodder or grass to silage or hay is a major challenge. In normal routine management practices, cutting of grass to be conserved in form of hay may be difficult as it is a requirement for this grass to wither for a day or two before you carry out the baling.

If baled when wet, grass may turn mouldy then attracting aflatoxins which will have adverse effect on the nutritional and high toxicity risks. Again this results in reduced food intake and other foliage hence poor productivity. The other challenge is that if there is flooding in fodder fields, this could result to rotting of fodder crops like maize leading to poor herbage and wastage.

What to do

Given that hay and silage take time to dry, how can farmers tackle this. First, make sure grass for baling is cut at the right stage ie flowering stage. This is because this is when it is most nutritious. At this stage, the pastures are too succulent and hence the need to reduce the moisture content to about 30 per cent to 40 per cent to improve the dry matter content and the palatability of the pastures.

Farmers should construct hay burns whereby the drying/wilting of the grass can be done with relative humidity and drying in the burns will also restore nutrients as there will be no direct contact of the grass with the sun. The hay burn should also have a slatted floor raised from the ground so that the bales don’t come into contact with water or termites.

For the silage, cut the ensiling material at the right stage probably the milky stage if it is maize and also do chopping either using a chaff cutter or a tractor. For small scale farmers, use the heavy gauge polythene (gauge “1000”) and make sure that compaction is done properly and ensure there is no contact with water.

Dangers of feeding cattle on wet feeds

Fodders and legumes which are too succulent like lurcene may lead to a condition known as bloat (accumulation of excess gas in the rumen) and this is a serious condition if not rectified can cause death. Also mouldy feeds are not palatable and may cause mycotoxins which cause mycosis (fungal infection).

So how do you keep the feeds dry and safe to eat during wet season

For the grasses or pastures, it’s important to let the rains subside so that the grass can be cut withered at hay burns by reducing the moisture content and conserving in a cool dry place to control moulds.

The other important point is that hay contains a lot of dry matter and these are the nutrients required by the animal for maintenance, growth, pregnancy and lactation. For the very coarse and dry hay/pasture, molasses can be added to improve on the palatability.

Mr Obadia Ndwiga is a Technologist at JKUAT, Department of Animal Science

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