Boulder Vermicomposting

Silage as worm food

On the_worm_bin, someone posted about using silage for worm food–does it make sense?

First, what is silage?  Silage is a fermented grain, usually (always?) corn, that is often used to feed animals over the winter.  The fermentation process preserves the nutrition for longer than fresh corn would keep.  However, silage will not keep forever.  For more on silage, see these pages (at the top of Google’s search results): Corn Silage, Silage Fermentation and Preservation,

Someone asked: “Has anyone had experience in feeding their worms silage? I have a dairy operator friend that has some slightly spoiled silage that he is willing to allow me to have.”

There were a variety of answers.  Someone suggested experimenting, and putting some on a location that the worms could either migrate towards or away from.  In general, this is always a good practice when feeding new kinds of food to worms.  They’re smart enough to run from what isn’t good, so give them the opportunity to do so!  This advice was seconded by another member.

I found some links of interest.  Here’s someone using silage, along with manure and hay, and precomposting it first: “RTS began accepting and actively pre-composting approximately five tons of separated dairy manure solids and off-specification dairy-cow feed (hay and corn silage) per day.”

Here’s an article talking about using silage as bedding: “Fourth grade students helped a parent volunteer build five worm bins, which they set on concrete blocks. To test the effectiveness of different beddings, they placed shredded newspaper in two bins, pulverized cardboard in another, old corn silage in the fourth bin, and composted horse and cow manure in the last bin. Of these beddings, the manure worked best, because red wigglers love manure. Newspaper also made a fine bedding, but dry cardboard was a hassle to handle; when it was moistened, it got too soggy.”

I also made some points about the pH of silage; according to this, it has a pH of 4.3 (although I imagine the pH depends on where the silage is in the fermentation process).  Worms like more neutral environments: “Redworms do best if the pH is around 7.0, however, they can tolerate levels from 4.2 to 8.0 or higher. Lime (calcium carbonate) may be mixed with the bedding material to correct acidity or to maintain a more
favorable pH. Pulverized edd shells also correct acidity. (Warning! Use only limestone and never hydrated lime. The wrong kind of lime will kill the worms!)”

Of course, all the links in the world aren’t worth real world experience.  Someone else said: “When I use silage as feed for my goats, the upper portion of my silage drums are mostly spoiled and these go direct to my wormbins. I have not had any problem with doing that.”

So, in short, it appears that silage can be a worm feedstock.  If you are a home worm keeper, this probably isn’t of much interest to you, because if you were offered silage, it probably would be spoiled and would come by the truckload .  But if you’re in commercial vermicomposting, perhaps you can find a farmer willing to give you free worm food!

2 comments September 17th, 2009