Storing Potatoes With Draff/Brewers Grains

Potatoes are currently quite cheap, quotes around £13-19 delivered.  If you are able to get draff this summer then a good storage option is ensiling potatoes with draff.  An alternative would be to use brewers grains.  Potatoes and draff can be safely ensiled together at a ratio of 2 draff:1 clean potatoes.  This produces a useful feed with around 11.8 MJ ME/kg DM and 18% CP in the DM.  The potatoes should be cleaned of soil as far as possible in order to avoid introducing undesirable bacteria such as clostridia.  As potatoes have a low dry matter, high water content it can be beneficial to ensile potatoes while the draff is hot.  This will partially cook the potatoes, helping to reduce effluent flow.  Aim to have the potatoes completely surrounded with the draff in order to exclude air pockets as much as possible and sheet it.

Mary Young, mary.young@sac.co.uk