All farms should be looking to capitalise on every cut of grass to produce the best quality and value forage for their farm this year.
This silage season will evidently be like no other. Currently, fertiliser and fuel prices sit at record highs, ultimately resulting in higher silage making costs.
Unfortunately, we cannot control these farm inputs – we all wish we could – but it must be said that making average, good or excellent-silage costs pretty much the same amount of money.
With every tonne of silage important, farms should be aiming to produce as much an energy dense forage as they possibly can.
How?
Firstly, you minimise the dry matter (DM) losses from forage at ensiling and, secondly, you speed up the fermentation process to conserve as much of the essential nutrients available in the forage.
Using a silage additive like Advance+ will drive a faster fermentation once ensiled, thus reducing dry matter (DM) losses during this process to improve protein and sugar levels and intake values.
Advance+ consistently improves silage quality when forage analyses are taken.
Provita Advance+ provides such dependable results because of the unique EU-approved triple bacterial strain combination. All strains of bacteria in Advance+ are registered with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) which requires extensive dossiers covering quality, safety, and efficacy.
Being a multi-strain product increases the reliability over a wider range of conditions also which is very useful for the unpredictable weather conditions. Applied at the recommended rate, Advance+ is guaranteed to supply 1.2 million bacteria/g of forage.
This high level of inoculant means sufficient numbers of bacteria are present to kick start and accelerate the fermentation process to lock in that goodness in the silage. Advance+ will improve silo face and bale stability once opened to delay heating so is an added insurance policy to help with any inaccuracies in the ensiling process.
Benefits
Silages treated with Advance+ consistently show more true protein, more energy and higher digestibility resulting in improved animal performance.
So, not using Advance+ is not saving money, it is costing money because the silage losses are greater and animals will underperform on forage-based diets and require more costly concentrates to make up the difference this incoming winter.
Typically, using Advance+ will yield a return on investment of 6:1, even in good weather conditions. Therefore, much like putting deposits away in the bank or stable investment funds, using Advance+ on silage means you will withdraw the benefits of it every time you feed out because it the added value it brings to your silage.
Reviews
Don’t just take our word for it – here is some feedback from Advance+ users:
“Tremendous results with Advance+: really sweetens our silage and makes good silage even better.”
“Annual forage analysis confirms every time the benefit of applying Advance+ to forage – results are always superior to untreated samples adding extra value to the silage, which results in a genuine return on investment for the farm.”
“I am happy to attribute my commitment to using Provita’s Advance+ inoculant as a significant factor in allowing me to make high quality silage. We have been using the product for the past 20 years – it gets the pH within the clamp down very quickly. But it’s at feeding out that I see the real benefit of the product.”
“We never get secondary fermentation on the face of the silage clamp. Our first cut silo is very wide. But even with this we never see any deterioration in the quality of the silage that is going into the feeder wagon. Another key benefit is the zero losses of forage at the surface and shoulders of the clamp. Again, I put this down to the effect of the inoculant.”
“If you want to get the maximum milk and beef from your grass then yes you need to be using a silage inoculant and based on our tests so far the best product to do this is Provita Advance+.”
“The difference when we opened the mini silo test was remarkable. The Advance+ treated silage was much sweeter smelling and you could feel that is was much drier versus the untreated silage. The intake model has indicated we get an extra 1 ltr/cow/day with a return on investment 6:1.”
“Advance+ helped us achieve good growth rates and the face kept well even with a 35% dry matter on the second cut. It also helped keep sugars high on the first cut with the mini silo test showing it kept twice as much sugar in the crop, our fermentations and intakes are very good for both cuts.”
Plan now to maximise your 2022 forage quality with Provita’s Advance+.
Contact Provita for your local stockist and ADVANCE+ SPECIAL OFFERS on: +44 28 8225 2352; [email protected].
References available on request.
By George Shaw, MPharm MPSNI, technical adviser
Contact George: [email protected]; 078 4192 6219.
