Check your silage for wireworm damage.

EVERYONE knows that correct storage of silage bales is vital to the feed. Handling and storing bales properly avoids damage caused by birds and rodents.

However, there is another potential hazard to baled silage, which has until nowbeen overlooked, and that is the damage which can be caused by wireworms.

Wireworms are the larvae of click beetles and are usually found in permanent pasture.

Damage caused by them has traditionally been associated with crops following long-term grassland.

In recent years, wireworm damage has become an increasing problem for potato growers in the UK.

As soil dwellers, they bite through roots and stems at ground level and any baled silage stored on the ground could be at risk of attack.

Visible wireworm damage takes the form of 4mm diameter holes created by the worms as they enter the bale.

If farmers wish to store bales on grassland, it is possible to do so as long as the bales are kept at least 10 metres away from any water, including field drains and ditches into which silage effluent could enter.

However, storing bales on grassland could lead to plastic film wrap which is in direct contact with the soil being damaged by burrowing wireworms.

In 2007, DowEurope GmbH, manufacturer of polyethylene resins designed for bale wrapping films, commissioned baled silage trials at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER).

The test bales were stored on grass and during the autumn holes were discovered and up to 10% of the silage surface was found to be mouldy.

Close inspection found the holes had been caused by wireworms.

IGER recommends farmers check their bale stacks as they feed this winter assessing the silage stretch film for wireworm damage around the periphery of where the bale touches the ground.

CAPTION(S):

The wireworm larvae