Manurelage Made From Corn Stalks, Manure

Manurelage Made From Corn Stalks, Manure MANURE HANDLING Miscellaneous 3-1-9 An Illinois cattle and hog farmer puts up a feed he calls "manurelage", and it could be a useful idea for other livestock farmers. "Manurelage" is corn stalk silage soaked down with liquid hog manure. "Some of the neighbors thought I was crazy, but it works," says Harold Wilhelms, of Shannon, Ill., who has been preserving cornstalks this way for the last two years. He and his herdsman, Lee Eden, decided to try it when they realized that hog manure has enough nutrients in it to balance a low energy beef ration. After experimenting on a small scale, they found that 30 days fermentation produced a stalklage with a pleasant, nutlike aroma but with no hint of the smell of manure. The cattle liked it. For the past two seasons, Wilhelms has used the method for putting up silage in a trench silo. He puts in a layer of chopped stalks, sprays it with liquid manure from his pit, and then spreads over another layer of chopped stalks. The moisture content is about 50 percent. The concept of "manurelage" is to help increase the feed value of the cattle ration rather than a method to get rid of hog manure. It uses only a small fraction of the large amount produced by Wilhelm's 4,000 hog operation. "Other farmers are curious about the idea, but not very many have the equipment and the setup to do it on their own farm," Wilhelms told FARM SHOW. He has found this a good way to utilize his stalks for his 100 beef cows. He hasn't tried mixing hog manure with oat straw or any other kind of crop residue. For more details, contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Harold Wilhelms, Route 1, Shannon, Ill. 61078 (ph 815 235-9343).

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