Forage Technology Ltd, UK partner biotech leader Chr Hansen, supplies Generation 2 microbial inoculants for silage. These inoculants treat 2,000,000 tonnes of UK silage each year. With such a large sample pool, we gain unique insight into the good, the bad, and the worse in silage-making. This includes clear patterns in quality and silage waste.
Silage waste: the maths:
If silage is worth £45.00 per tonne, then why do we glibly accept losses from the field to the cow at an average of 27%? Would we accept a waggon load of 20 tonnes of feed, of which we tip 5 tonnes straight into the midden?
Let’s back up a moment – silage ‘worth £45 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. Simple sum – if concentrate is £400 per tonne. that’s £454 per tonne of DM.
30% of that makes the silage value £136.20, and replacing that 27% loss on a 1,000 tonne crop is going to total around £37,000 every year.
SiloSolve – nor any product, despite its claims – is a substitute for all the things that a farmer can do to make more milk/meat from forage. The better the initial product and silage management, the greater the gains from the SiloSolve treatment.
Our Top 4 Pointers for Great Silage
Soil Health
The health of the soil creates the health and productivity of the crop. Decades of intensive slurry application can unbalance the entire microbial population and deplete essential nutrients. Silage energy and protein start in this soil and end in either the milk tank or behind the cow. It’s the feed that determines the year, and poor silage cannot be rescued by alternative feeds or concentrates. Poor silage reduces productivity, and every pallet of expensive supplements, fats, yeasts, mycotoxin binders, etc. won’t “fix” the cows. Poor silage wrecks rumen function.
Crop Condition
Harvesting younger, more nutritious material, with lower indigestible fibre levels, brings its problems. A higher buffering capacity (the ability to withstand pH change) means more extensive fermentation (conversion of plant sugars to predominantly lactic acid). Excess lactic acid with residual oxygen feeds heat-producing yeasts, promoting mould growth and resulting in silage waste.
Drier silage is better as it lowers the production of acid. However, it requires high-quality clamp management as it’s prone to oxygen ingress. Pay extra attention to the top third, which is never as well consolidated as the rest of the clamp.
Compaction
Once the clamp is opened and oxygen begins to creep in, many of the dormant problem organisms get a wake-up call. Compaction is key. Feeding out, moving through the silage clamp at 0.5 metres a week, loss of DM – remember that’s the sugar and protein, not the indigestible fibre, so double the amount of potential feed value that is lost. For example, in a 500 Kgs per m silage will be 10%, whereas in a 950 Kgs per m silage will be 2%.
Silage Heating and Waste
Heating silage. First, there are two kinds of heating. One is the “thermal blanket effect.” This is evidence of good silage clamp management. For up to 120 days after harvest, a well-consolidated, oxygen-free, weighted clamp will retain much of the ambient temperature it was ensiled at, and a few degrees involved in the fermentation process. That heat dissipates rapidly when the silage is removed from the clamp, and TMR is cool and palatable.
The other heat, called spoilage, is yeast and mould-derived. Spoilage is due to sugar and protein-destroying microorganisms. SiloSolve® FC is unique. Its patented oxygen scavenging ability stops heat and other undesirable processes in their tracks. One product works on all crops and all dry matters. Contact us today to find out more.
