Effects of water damage on feed

After a flood event, it’s vital to give good nutritious feed to livestock in flood-affected areas.

This is particularly important for pregnant and young animals because they’re less able to tolerate stressful events.

However, if the availability of feed has been compromised, you might need to begin by feeding water-damaged fodder.

Water-damaged fodder can be a risk to both your health and safety, and that of your livestock.

Talk to your vet or your livestock consultant about managing a feed program for flood-affected stock.

Silage

Bales that have been inundated by water will be sodden because of seepage into the baled material, despite being wrapped in 4 layers of plastic.

Inundation with water leaches the preservation acids contained within the bale.

This allows air to enter rapidly and silt to deposit inside.

The pH will rise and undesirable bacteria will multiply in the air, resulting in decomposition.

Signs of water damaged silage include bales that are:

 black

 oozy or slimy

 have an odour.

Silage bales that have been inundated, but not moved, by water might be salvageable.

By feeding whole bales of water-damaged silage to livestock, the animals can freely choose the unaffected portions of the bale.

Silage stacks

If a stack has been partially inundated and safe access is possible, it might be possible to move the unaffected upper section of the stack to another site.

Once moved, the silage needs to be rerolled and resealed. Do this quickly to minimise further losses.

Hay

Some portions of shedded and unshedded hay stacks may be salvageable if they’re readily accessible and alternative ‘dry’ sites are available.

Hay inundated with water poses a serious risk to the health and safety of both humans and animals.

Wet hay, particularly that at the bottom of hay stacks, carries a high risk of spontaneous combustion (self-ignition), or of collapsing under the pressure of bales above them as the bottom ones rot.

Only attempt to move hay when:

 access to the hay is good

 the correct equipment is available

 a suitable alternative dry site is available.

Shedded hay

The residual moisture will ‘wick’ its way up into the drier bales immediately above, spoiling them.

If possible, consider removing the upper drier bales to a suitable site. Ideally, move suspect bales to another site. Suspect bales include:

 wet bales

lbales subject to ‘wicking’

 outside stack bales exposed to rain fall.

Alternatively, put these on top of the drier bales, allowing any heat build-up to dissipate while redrying.

These new stacks need good ventilation and protection from further rain.

Unshedded hay

The top layer or 2 of large rectangular stacks will need to be kept separate from the drier bales further down.

The outer rows of bales exposed to prevailing winds and heavy rains will most likely need to be considered ‘suspect’ and removed.

Move bales at the bottom of the stack that have been inundated with water to avoid collapse or spontaneous combustion.