Vol. 12, Issue 9 (2023)

Study was carried out in the Department of LPM, Veterinary College, Bangalore, with an objective to investigate the whether there is a possibility of converting maize stover into haylage or silage. The NAC 6004 maize variety grown in 0.1 ha was harvested manually, at 75 days (dough stage), at 100 days (grain harvest maturity). The fodder, thus harvested was chaffed and ensiled in three replicates in 10 liter polythelene boxes in a two (stage of harvest) x three (levels of treating) design, with three treatments viz., chaffed fodder as is (Control, C), C+ Jaggery at the rate of two per cent on as is weight (T1) and T1+Lactobacillus bacteria (LB) (Nutri-LAB ®, 600 Crores of spores per gram (Siddon Biotech Ltd, Banaswadi, Bengaluru) @ 100g per ton of feed) (T2). The results indicated that the quantity of fodder that could be packed in the plastic container ranged from 6.88 - 7.03 kg for maize dough stage silage (MdoS) and from 5.29 to 5.63 kg for maize stover silage (MstS). The weight of silages recovered the respective two silages ranged between 6.77 to 7.05 kg and 5.27 to 5.60 kg respectively. The mean recovery of biomass as silage for MdoS was 91.74 and for MstS was 96.58 %. The proximate compositions for whole plant maize fodder harvested at 75th day (MdoS) and for maize fodder after grain removal at 100th day (MstS) silages of different treatments were different only with respect to NDF and found same for rest of all the contents. The content of NDF was low in T1 when compared to other two treatments viz., C and T2. The relationship between both the control and treatment silages with additive was found to be significant (P =0.0108). The content of CP in MdoS was 8.31 and the same in MstS was 5.83 per cent. The difference was found to be non-significant. Lignin content was also found to be non-significant in MdoS (8.98) and in MstS (10.82). The gas production potential (D (ml/200 mg DM)) of C, T1, and T2 of MdoS and MstS were 99.66, 91.90, 85.10 and 66.28, 69.10, 68.54 respectively. The calculated ME (MJ/kg DM) content of MdoS (10.61) was found to be significant (P = 0.0220) when compared to MstS (8.13). The results of the current experiment indicates that similar to the green maize silage (MdoS), stay green maize stover may be used to make good quality silage with no addition of any additive. Whereas, addition of lactobacillus had an impact on the reduction in acceptability in animals.