Silage breakthrough will conserve sugars

摘要

Conventional ensiling wisdom has it that you must squeeze every bit of air out of the clamp as your heaviest tractor can manage, but now a new additive has been launched that effectively adds oxygen no less. What is going on? The principles involved in producing grass silage are fairly straight forward. You ensile the grass and encourage anaerobic conditions by keeping out air so that beneficial bugs break down sugar to produce lactic acid. This lowers the pH to a level where the bugs kill themselves and the silage becomes stable. But the trouble is the resulting forage is acidic with a pH of 3,8 to 42 which is not ideal for ruminant animals. The rumen likes to work at pH 6,0 to 62 and the cow has to produce a lot of saliva to prevent acidosis.