Determining Silage Quality: a complete guide

So, you have made silage for your cattle. That’s good because silage benefits farm animals such as cows, buffaloes, and bulls. However, that is, if it’s made of good quality. So how do you check the quality of the silage you made with so much effort? It’s very crucial to check silage quality before feeding it to cattle. Otherwise, it can create health issues if the quality is poor. So your aim should be providing good quality silage in proper amounts to your cattle for maximum benefits. You already know the latter, but for the former, you need a guide to help you determine silage quality.

Finding Silage quality by color

You can visually determine the quality of your silage by looking at its color. Here’s how.

Between light brown, green, and golden

It is the usual range of colors for grass, maize, and cereal silages. The quality is good, and it’s excellent to feed your cows in the proper quantity.

Between black, slightly damp, and dark brown

It is poor quality silage with extreme damage from heat and significant losses in digestibility. In addition, this fodder will typically have molds. Therefore, you should never feed it to your cows. Otherwise, they can face digestive problems or other unwanted health issues, resulting in less or poor quality milk yield.

Reasons for extensive heat damage in silage: Avoid these reasons when making your silage.

• Heat damage occurs when temperatures are extensively high, especially when you don’t fill your silo quickly or properly pack it, which results in excess oxygen damaging the silage.
• The above allows plant respiration to continue for an extended time, which results in more heat production than required.
• At these temperatures, a chemical reaction happens between protein and carbohydrate in the fodder, resulting in the undesired dark brown color.

Determining silage quality by smell

The smell is another visual factor by which you can determine silage quality.

Mild and pleasantly acidic

• It is what you shall desire from your silage end product.
• It is a sign of good quality silage.

Tobacco smell with burnt sugar

Just like you can’t eat, what’s unpleasant to your nose, your cows can’t either. This smell is undesirable. This odor is strong, salty, and unpleasant with ammonia.

• The taste is also poor, and it determines overheating. Never feed it to your cattle, no matter what.

Alcoholic odor

• It is connected with yeast fermentation from slow feed-out rates and air penetration into the fodder with high ethanol levels.

Sour vinegar smell

If your silage smells like this, it indicates a poor fermentation process. Such fermentation is dominated by acetic acid-producing bacteria and commonly has low DM and sugar ensiling material.

• Such silage will not benefit your cows, even if it doesn’t cause any health issues.

That was visual evaluation, which any farmer can easily do. However, many scientific properties, such as pH and energy content, determine silage quality. Unfortunately, not all farmers have the tools to check silage scientifically.

For such farmers, experts recommend Silage Agro Private Limited. Opinions say that they have provided the best quality Corn Silage to farmers in India. In addition, their silage goes through multiple tests before finalizing, offering only the top fodder for cows, buffaloes, and bulls, making them the best Silage Suppliers in Haryana. Thank you for reading.

If they follow the path of good management, it is so far the farmers that they will be better off balancing their rations and improving their agricultural operations.