A silo holds chopped green crops under anaerobic conditions to ferment them into silage, a nutritious winter feed for livestock. Traditional upright silos are built from concrete staves, steel, or fiberglass and unload from the top or bottom. The tight seal prevents oxygen from spoiling the packed material, allowing lactic acid bacteria to preserve the feed.
Heard on the job
The blower pipe clogged up halfway through filling the blue silo with corn silage.
Also heard as
- tower silo
Do not mix it up with
- Grain elevator: A silo holds wet fermented forage, while a grain elevator or grain bin holds dry threshed grain.