SUITABILITY OF SUGARCANE TOPS FOR SILAGE MAKING
By T. M. PAUL and M. C. RANGASAMY, Imperial Dairy Research Institute, Bangalore
(Received for publication on 25 October 1945)
S UGARCANE is very extensively cultivated in India, the estimated land under sugarcane for
1944-45 being 4,134,000 acres. The yield of sugarcane varies from province to province, but the
average yield of millable cane is estimated to be about 20 tons per acre. The yield of sugarcane
tops available in India is roughly 22 per cent of the millable cane which amounts to a little over four
tons per acre. This amounts to 16,536,000 tons, and is likely to be on the increase. Thus very
large amounts of sugarcane tops are produced in the sugarcane tracts during the sugarcane milling
season. A comparatively negligible portion of it, is being utilized as fodder for cattle while the rest
of it is allowed to wither and dry on the field and subsequently utilized as fuel for feeding the furnaces
during the concentration of the sugarcane juice or simply burnt off on the fields. Thus it is clear,
that a very large proportion of the sugarcane tops produced in India is allowed to go to waste. If
some profitable means of utilizing this is found, that will certainly add to the income of the sugar-
cane cultivator. According to 'Morrison Sugarcane tops make satisfactory forage for livestock'
and our own experience is that cattle relish them when they are fresh, but when they are wilted and
a bit dry, cattle do not relish them much, possibly due to the coarse nature of sugarcane tops and
leaves. Again due to the local and seasonal concentration in the production of sugarcane tops,
one cannot expect that any considerable portion of it will be utilized as cattle feed in the fresh state.
Therefore some suitable method of preserving the sugarcane tops with or without processing has
to be evolved, if all the sugar tops is to be utilized as fodder. By making silage perhaps, its, fodder
qualities may improve and the cattle may relish it just like any other roughage. Moreover silage
making is a method of preservation of fodder for seasons of fodder shortage. Thus, if silage could
be successfully made out of sugarcane tops and if cattle could be fed on it safely, it may go a great
way to relieve the fodder shortage in the country and thus contribute to the solution of the milk-
problem to a certain extent. Both in America and Japan, sugarcane as well as sugarcane tops and
bagasse have been successfully fed to cattle as silage and otherwise. But so far no data is available
as to the suitability of the sugarcane tops for silage making under the Indian conditions and how far
the indigenous breeds of cattle will relish it as fodder. Therefore an attempt was made at the Imperial
Dairy Research Institute to study this problem.
EXPERIMENTAL
Sugarcane tops were procured locally in as fresh a condition as possible. Daily about a ton
of the material was brought and cut into 1/3 to ½ inch bits in a chaffing machine and filled into five ft.
cube silage pits dug in the ground. On the first day the sugarcane tops were filled into silo No. I
without the addition of any thing else, second day's sample was filled into silo No. II with the addition
of molasses at the rate of 40 lb. per ton diluted with an equal amount of water and the third day's
sample was mixed with an equal amount of a mixture of guinea and Napier grasses and filled into
silo No. III. During the filling of the silo pits, a representative sample was taken for analysis. Care
was taken to tramp down the chopped matter very well, particularly at the sides of the pit to drive
out as much air as possible. The pits were filled upto two feet above the ground level and
covered with some ragi straw upto one foot thick. These were then covered with mud so as to give
a hemispherical shape on the top. Finally the surface was plastered with a wet mixture of mud and
cowdung so that the pit was almost air and water tight. All the pits were daily examined for any
crevice on the surface and the crevices that appeared were immediately repaired. After three months
the pits were opened, the top layer of ragi straw was removed and the silage examined for texture,
flavour etc. A representative sample was removed from each silo pit for proximate analysis. Table
I gives the results of the analysis before and after making the silage.
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