Ensiling grass (or corn, or anything else) is simply making sauerkraut out of it- letting it ferment in the absence of oxygen. With grass, it should be between 30 and 50% moisture- any drier, and it will mold (or heat up and possibly spontaneously combust), any wetter and it will not cure properly and will spoil and just be a gooey mess. Moisture probes are readily available at farm supply stores. Usually best to cut it and leave it in the swath, check the moisture, and chop it when its right.
If you are making hay, and it gets rained on, if the grass itself is less than 30% moisture, it won't cure properly- moisture extraneous to the plant matter doesn't count in the calculation.
You have to store it so it won't get oxygen- upright silo, pit silo, or round bales wrapped in plastic. If you're going to do it on a small scale, I think you can still get silage bags from Ag Bag Corp., put the round bale in the bag, and suck the air out with a shop vac. Not real speedy, but virtually no investment (other than the round baler, which you can also use for hay). Larger operations use another implement to pick up and wrap the bales in plastic.
Good feed for cattle, goats and sheep, but not for horses- not being ruminants, they can't digest it properly.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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