I worked on a dairy farm in high school many years ago. When the family bought the farm there was a silo filled with corn silage that had been there several years. We dug it out from the bottom but never went inside to do it. After it was empty we filled it with alphala and my friend (owners son) and I got inside as the alphala was blown in from the top and we used a hose to wet it down, stomp it down and throw rock salt all around. It was itchy work and as soon as we got out we hosed each other down. The old silos, like this one, were higher and thinner than the newer ones. We were always warned that you had to be careful around the silo but usually because of the danger of methane gas if the grain was not packed very tight. That’s why we stomped it.
Wetting it down? I don’t understand. When I worked on a farm, we did all we cold do to get alfalfa dry before we stored it, else the moisture helped to create just the right conditions with pressure of the weight, to cause the stored alfalfa to spontaneously combust. I knew of several barns that burned as a result.