Preventing bird damage to wrapped baled silage during short- and long-term storage

The plastic stretch-film surrounding baled silage is prone to damage by birds during storage prior to being fed to livestock. Relatively few Irish farmers take precautions to protect their bales from wildlife during this storage period. We examined the effects of 4 short-term (7- day) storage methods of baled silage (spread out on grass stubble, grouped on grass stub- ble, grouped on meadow, or grouped on 5-week grass regrowth) on the incidence of bird damage to the plastic stretch-film in the field. Silage bales left spread out on grass-stubble fields were prone to damage by birds. Relocating the bales to a nearby meadow or grass regrowth reduced the extent of bird damage to the plastic film. Grouping bales onto stub- ble appeared to offer some opportunity to reduce damage but was not an effective protec- tion method. We also evaluated the efficacy of painted designs, monofilament line config- urations, netting, scare-eye balloons, and bale orientation as strategies for minimizing bird damage to the plastic film surrounding baled silage during long-term storage. Bales stored outdoors and without protection suffered considerable and continuing bird damage to the plastic film throughout storage in all experiments. The use of nets securely positioned 1 m above and beside the bales and monofilament lines at 0.5-m spacings were the best meth- ods (P 1 m and scare-eye balloons failed to protect the plastic film sur- rounding bales from bird damage. Direct physical barriers to bird access as opposed to scaring devices appeared to be the most reliable methods of preventing damage.