There’s an established process in dairying of buying in supplementary feed to balance any ‘shortfall’ in the nutritional quality of silage.

That’s fine. But with dairy margins tight, you need to find ways to save costs. And that means extracting maximum nutritional value from the silage you make this year.

Clearly, having good grass to start with and good clamp management are essential. And the integral part played by using a proven bacterial silage additive to rapidly reduce the pH and better preserve the silage is well documented.

But a proven additive can deliver much more. It can also increase silage dry matter quantity, as well as silage quality and milk yield.

More dry matter in your clamp

Across 15 grass silage trials, dry matter recovery was boosted from 91.8% to 95.5% by using a proven bacterial additive.

For 1,000 tonnes ensiled, that would give you an extra 37 tonnes to feed. If silage is worth €38/t, that’s an extra €1.406 return. That goes a long way to paying for the silage additive for the whole clamp!

Better silage quality = more milk from forage

On top of that, a quality lactic acid bacteria additive has been shown in trials to:
  • Improve silage digestibility
  • Improve silage metabolisable energy
  • And most importantly, improve milk yield – by an average extra 1.2 litres per cow per day (15 trials, various forages)

If you assume 200 days of feeding silage, based on the extra 1.2 litres of milk produced per cow per day in trials, that’s an extra 240 litres! At 20 pence per litre, that’s an extra €60.82 worth of milk per cow from your silage.

ecosyl

Cost-wise, if that cow eats 10t of silage over winter, the cost of a silage additive for those 10t would be around €16.47.

In other words, a €60.82 return for around a €16.47 investment per cow (more than tripling your return), based on these figures. Worth thinking about with the silage season upon us.

Talk to your Ecosyl specialist today.

ECOSYL SILAGE