More accurate laboratory tests for assessing silage quality

Summary

Farmers and their advisers need accurate estimates of silage quality to formulate balanced diets for cows, and as a management tool to assess the success of their silage making operation in producing silage of acceptable quality. Hence within the Top Fodder Silage program we are encouraging farmers to have their silage tested. This will clearly establish the linkage between management practices and silage quality.

Our market research (early 2002) has shown that currently only 14% of dairy farmers normally test their silage. This is a major limitation to the adoption of best-practice silage management on dairy farms. In the "Successful Silage" manual we have allocated a chapter to the use of feed testing to assess silage quality. This chapter covers the subject in some detail, with recommendations for farmers to:

Routinely test their silage

Check that the estimated metabolisable energy (ME) and crude protein (CP) content take account of the volatiles lost on oven drying (we are currently developing correction equations)

Ask for additional tests to assess silage fermentation quality - silage pH and arnmonia-N content Currently, most Australian feed testing laboratories are not taking account of silages volatiles in their analyses and are not providing tests to assess silage fermentation quality.

So the Top Fodder Silage program will work with both farmers and laboratories to ensure that the number of silage samples submitted to the laboratories will increase, and that appropriate silage tests are adopted by the industry.