Maize Stover as Dry Season Feed: Harvest, Store and Chop It Before the Rains Ruin It

In much of the Rift Valley and Western Kenya, the long rains maize comes off the field around now, and the short rains arrive on top of the harvest. The cobs go to the store. The stalks stay standing in the field, or get cut and thrown into a heap at the edge of the shamba. Within a few weeks of rain, that heap is black, mouldy and useless. By February, the same farmer is buying hay at a high price to keep the cows milking.

Maize stover, the dry stalks, leaves and husks left after the cobs are removed, is one of the biggest feed resources on a Kenyan mixed farm. It is not a high quality feed on its own, but harvested at the right time, stored dry and chopped before feeding, it carries cattle, goats and sheep through the dry months at a fraction of the cost of bought forage.

This guide covers when to harvest stover, how to dry and store it so the short rains do not spoil it, why chopping matters, how to improve its feeding value with other farm feeds, and what equipment helps. For drying the grain itself, see our guide to maize harvest timing and drying.

What Stover Is Worth as Feed

Stover is mostly fibre. It provides energy and bulk, keeps the rumen working and fills the animal, but it is low in protein and minerals compared with good hay, fresh Napier or legume forage. Feeding analyses consistently put maize stover well below the protein that a milking cow needs, and its quality falls the longer it stands in the field after the grain is mature.

Different parts of the plant are not equal. The leaves and husks are more digestible than the thick lower stem, which animals often leave uneaten. That is why stover fed whole has a lot of waste, and why chopping and harvesting early make such a difference.

Harvest Timing: Earlier Is Better

Stover is at its best soon after the cobs are harvested, while some leaves are still green. Every week it stands in the field, sun and rain wash out nutrients, leaves fall and break, and termites and moulds move in. In the short rains, standing stover can lose much of its value within weeks.

Plan the work so stover is cut within a few days of harvesting the cobs, on dry days. Cut close to the ground with a sharp panga or sickle, and keep the stalks off wet soil. If you harvest cobs from standing plants, follow straight behind with the stover cutting gang.

Drying and Storing Stover Through the Rains

The aim is to get the stover dry and keep it dry. Wet stover goes mouldy, and mouldy feed is not only wasted but can be harmful to animals. Moulds on stored feed can produce toxins, including aflatoxins, which affect animal health and can pass into milk. Never feed visibly mouldy, black or musty smelling stover.

1. Field dry briefly. Stand cut stalks in stooks (bundles leaning together like a tent) in the field for a few dry days, so air moves through them.
2. Store under cover. Move dry stover into a shed, a raised rack under an iron sheet roof, or stack it and cover the top with a tarpaulin or iron sheets weighted down against the wind.
3. Keep it off the ground. Build the stack on poles, pallets or stones so water does not wick up from wet soil and termites have a harder time.
4. Leave airflow. Do not pack damp stover tightly; it heats and moulds inside the stack.
5. Check after storms. Look for leaks in the cover and wet patches at the base, and fix them the same day.

Our guide to feed storage, pests and moulds covers stores, rats and moisture in more detail, and the same rules apply to stover as to bagged feed.

Chopping: Less Waste, More Eaten

Whole stalks fed in a trough are pulled out, trampled and left. Animals pick the leaves and husks and reject the hard stem. Chopping the stover into short lengths with a chaff cutter means animals eat more of each stalk, waste less, and can be fed mixed rations where the stover is combined with other feeds so they cannot sort out only the best parts.

For dairy cattle, chopped lengths of around 2 to 3 centimetres are commonly recommended for stover and Napier in Kenya. A hand chaff cutter suits a farm with two or three cows; an engine or electric powered chaff cutter makes sense for larger herds or for a farmer who chops for neighbours. Our guides to choosing a chaff cutter and chaff cutter maintenance and blades explain the options and how to keep the blades sharp. Chop only what you will feed in a day or two; chopped stover has more surface for moulds if it gets damp.

Improving the Feeding Value

Several practical methods are used in Kenya to make stover go further:

• Mix with legume residues. Bean haulms, groundnut haulms, sweet potato vines and dried lucerne or desmodium add protein. Store them dry alongside the stover and mix at feeding.
• Feed with greens. Combining chopped stover with fresh Napier, fodder trees such as calliandra, or other green forage improves intake and balance.
• Molasses. Sprinkling diluted molasses over chopped stover makes it more palatable and adds energy. Ask your supplier or nutritionist how much to use.
• Urea treatment. Treating stover with urea solution under a cover is a known method for improving digestibility and protein. Urea is toxic to cattle if used wrongly, so only use this method after training from your livestock extension officer, and never let animals reach urea fertiliser.

Combined with stover from your own farm, a planned bank of silage or hay makes the dry season much easier; see our guides to making silage and hay and fodder baling.

How Much Stover Will You Need?

Work it out from the number of animals, the number of dry season days and how much of the ration stover will supply. As a planning rule, cattle eat a daily amount of dry feed in the region of 2 to 3 percent of their body weight, depending on the animal and feed quality, and stover will be only part of that. Weighing a few bundles on a spring or platform scale gives you a much better estimate of what you actually have than guessing from the size of the heap.

A worked example, with assumed numbers: two cows of about 400 kg each, eating roughly 2.5 percent of body weight as dry matter, need about 20 kg of dry matter a day between them. If stover supplies about a third of that, it is around 7 kg a day, or over 600 kg for a 90 day dry season, before allowing for waste. Your own figures will differ; the point is that most farmers underestimate how much they need, and the heap that looked enormous in October is gone by January.

Goats and sheep can use stover too, and they are better than cattle at picking out the leaves and husks. For small stock, hang bundles in a rack off the ground or chop them, rather than throwing them on the floor of the pen, where they are trampled and soiled within hours. The same rules on mould apply: small ruminants should never be fed mouldy stover either.

A Practical Daily Feeding Routine

Take out only one or two days of stover from the store at a time, so the rest stays dry and covered. Shake out each bundle and remove any mouldy, black or rotten parts before chopping. Chop in the morning, mix with the other ingredients, and feed in a trough or feed face rather than on the ground, where trampled and soiled feed is wasted. Clear out leftovers before the next feed; stale chopped stover that has been rained on goes off quickly.

Watch the leftovers. If animals leave a lot of thick stem behind, chop finer or feed a little less stover with more of the better feeds. If they clean the trough quickly and still look hungry, they need more total feed, not just more stover. Keep fresh, clean water available all the time; animals eating dry, fibrous feed drink more.

Feed It, Sell It or Leave It on the Field?

Stover has other uses. It can be sold to livestock keepers, left on the field as soil cover, or ploughed in to return organic matter. Burning it wastes all of these, and on many farms it is the worst option. Where soils are poor or erosion is a problem, some advisers suggest leaving part of the stover as mulch and feeding the rest. If you sell stover, weigh it or agree a price per bundle of a fixed size; heaps are easy to argue about. Whatever you choose, decide before the rains, because standing stover makes the decision for you by rotting.

If your own stover will not last, now is the time to plan: buy stover or hay from neighbours at harvest when it is cheapest, agree to cut and carry a neighbour's stover in exchange for part of it, or plant fodder that will be ready in the dry months. Buying in February, when every livestock keeper is looking, is always the most expensive option.

Stover Checklist

Cutting and Chopping Equipment, With Prices

These prices are from the Fuga price list at the time of writing; check the site or call a branch for current prices and stock.

Cut the stover early, get it dry, keep it under cover and chop it before feeding, and the field you have just harvested becomes part of your dry season feed bank. See our chaff cutters and the full farm equipment range, or WhatsApp 0716 961 018 with your herd size and we will help you choose a cutter.

Frequently Asked Questions