The effects of different chopping length and compressing pressure on corn silage quality at two stage of maturity

This study was conducted to determine effects of different harvesting period, copping length and compression pressure on corn silage quality. For this purpose corn, which was 1/4 and 1/2 milk line maturity period, was harvested by single row forager and copped 18 and 22 mm size. Harvested corn was ensiled in 2 liter PVC tubes by 1 and 2 MPa pressure for fermentation. Corn silage physical and chemical analysis was perfomed after the ninety-day fermentation process and silage quality were determined. The pH, dry matter (DM), crude ash (CA), crude fat (CF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF) and metabolic energy (ME) values were %3.83-3.88, 31.94-33.98, 4.82-5.32, 2.94-2.43, 37.89-43.76, 24.09-27.04 and 2.32-2.20 Mcalkg-1 respectively with progressing of harvesting period (p<0.01). Flieg Scores were also increased from 115.74 to 117.62 depending of harvesting period (p<0.05). pH, crude fat and crude protein level values were changed respectively (3.84-3.87), (2.62-2.75) and (7.60-7.77) with increasing of compressing pressure (p<0.01). Lignin was increased from 3.28 to 3.48 (p<0.05) by increasing the copping size. All silage from our research get well silage quality classes with up to 100 points according to Flieg Score. It was concluded that corn harvested 1/4 or 1/2 milk line maturity can copp 17-20 mm size and can compress with 1 MPa for well quality silage.