For the first time in roughly two years, milk price cuts have been announced, ranging anywhere from 0.23ppl to a huge 3ppl. Understandably, some may now be scrambling to make savings to cover this difference, fully aware that the cost of production is hovering around 44p per litre, it may not even be a case of shrinking profits, but preventing losses. As many believe silage inoculants to be an ‘optional extra’, their first idea might be to ditch it to save a few of those lost pennies — this is misguided to say the least, and will, in a lot of cases, lead to higher losses. But, what if we told you that using Silosolve can mitigate these losses, and make you even more savings in other areas too?
SiloSolve is the ultimate silage inoculant created by Chr Hansen, the world’s largest and ‘most sustainable’ biotech company. The Silosolve range is state-of-the-art biotechnology, with € 5,000,000 in research and development, proven to reduce yeasts and moulds by up to 98%, cutting waste and eliminating nasties that might cause harm to cows. There is no need to glibly accept losses from field to clamp at an average of 27% — expensive silage that would otherwise be thrown away can now be eaten and turned into milk, saving on both waste and gaining money on more milk. Some quick maths for you: Silosolve is proven to save 5% of precious dry matter compared to competitors. If silage is valued at £50 per tonne, that 5% saves you £2.50 per ton, which – even less the cost of Silosolve – is a big saving over a 2000 tonne clamp!
Let’s back up a moment – silage ‘worth £50 per tonne’. How about if we value it against the replacement cost? Dry matter is the amount of food in any given product, minus water, so silage might average 30% DM, and concentrate might average 88% DM. Simply, if concentrate is £400 per tonne, that’s £454 per tonne of DM. With that, the 30% DM figure for silage gives an (as-fed) value not of £50 per tonne, but £136.20, and replacing that 27% average loss mentioned above in a 1,000 tonne crop is going to cost around £37,000 – every year. Suddenly an additive doesn’t seem so expensive!
Of course, all we’ve mentioned so far are the obvious losses we can see with our eyes. We – or rather, the cows – lose out on a lot more during wasteful fermentation processes created by a lack of, or a useless – possibly even negative – inoculant, such as carbohydrate losses, protein losses, and even changes in digestibility and palatability, which impact potential DM intake. Silosolve has been proven in all areas to improve on and mitigate these waste processes, and when these factors can all directly impact milk yield and constituents, it would be a waste not to use SiloSolve.
Intake in dairy cows is often lower than ideal, and after recent palatability trials against competitors, Silosolve has proven to be cow’s first choice — through its incredibly effective fermentation process that improves retention of all the nutrition already mentioned, Silosolve changes the volatiles within the silage to create a scent especially appealing to the herd, which gets them to eat more. The simple act of eating more equals making more milk. This is a win-win situation as not only does this yield higher milk production, but it also equals reduced concentrate costs. What can we say — the cows know what they want.
Outlay for a product or item may often be daunting, but it’s worth calculating the return on your investment before just sticking with “old faithful” because it’s cheap, or worse still, because your dad used it! Silosolve not only saves on so much waste, visible or not, but it may help you find profit in ways you’ve never even considered.
