At the 2018 AZH conference in Winnipeg, Zanis Valdmanis and Benjamin Martin from the Toronto Zoo gave a presentation on making silage. Dani Ferguson and I, from the Oregon Zoo, were paying close attention, as this was something we wanted to try here. With the knowledge gained at the conference and the help of Lance Swearengin from Oklahoma City Zoo, we ventured into the world of silage. Since we didn’t start until after the conference, we had a shortened season to collect browsable material, so our trials were somewhat limited. We ended up preparing 30 barrels of silage, using a variety of plant material and a couple different methods. After much anticipation, we finally opened our first barrel last week. 

We were very excited to see that the instructions we received worked really well; the silage looked great and had the appetizing scent of cider, it was like opening a can of summer. Anxious to see if our efforts were worth it, we traveled around our zoo and asked keepers to feed out some of the silage to all our animals that eat browse. We were thrilled to see that every animal species we gave it to really took to the silage, with just a few individual exceptions, and those animals are known picky eaters anyway.

These efforts demonstrate the value of the AZH annual conference and membership for idea sharing. A big “Thank You” to those who shared their experiences with us so we could create browse to use during the winter season. We already are planning to prepare more silage for next year.