Inoculants

A quality silage inoculant will improve silage quality by delivering a faster, more efficient fermentation.

They help lock in nutrients and dry matter so your livestock can produce more milk or meat from every tonne of pasture or crop you ensile.

Pioneer® brand inoculants are unique —combining bacteria strains that work together well to improve the initial preservation, the stability and the digestibility of the nutrients in the silage.

Once oxygen free (anaerobic) conditions have been created through compacting and sealing the forage, bacteria will begin to multiply, convert plant sugars to fermentation acid and pH drops preserving the forage as silage.

A lactic fermentation is the most desirable because minimal energy is lost during the fermentation process and lactic acid produces palatable, high feed value silage. Just as cows differ in their ability to produce milk from grass, different bacterial strains vary in their ability to produce lactic acid.

The most desirable strains are those that can convert sugar to lactic acid with minimal energy and drymatter loss. Pioneer® brand inoculants contain bacteria that have been specially selected to give a faster, more efficient fermentation.

• Give a faster and more efficient fermentation.
• Increase silage energy content (feed value).
• Decrease protein breakdown.
• Improve silage digestibility.
• Increase drymatter recovery.
• Reduce heating, spoilage, shrinkage and run-off.
• Lift palatability giving higher drymatter intakes.
• Reduce silage heating and spoilage at feed-out time

Harvest at the correct time

• Aim to conserve quality pasture and forage crops at the correct stage of maturity.

• Aim to achieve target dry matters.

Use Pioneer® brand inoculant

• Pioneer has a world-class inoculant research program.

• Pioneer has patented proprietary inoculants.

• Pioneer has crop specific inoculants  for improved performance.

Compaction

• For stacked silage, spread into 100-150 mm layers and compact until the surface is firm.

Sealing

• Cover stack with a quality plastic cover and weigh it down with tyres that are touching.

• Seal the edges.

• Use the recommended number of wraps  for baled silage.

Storage

• Handle bales carefully to avoid puncturing the wrap.

• Mend holes that develop in the silage cover or bale wrap immediately.

Pioneer^® brand inoculants have been tested under ideal harvest management conditions. Trial results show that Pioneer^® brand inoculants increase silage quality and decrease losses even when environmental and crop harvest conditions are excellent.

While silage inoculants are designed to make good silage better - and not bad silage good, the potential gains of using a silage inoculant may be even greater when harvest conditions are less than ideal.

Once the air has been excluded from a silage stack, anaerobic (oxygen-hating) bacteria multiply and convert sugars to acid. This process is known as silage fermentation and the acid preserves the plant material as silage. All crops contain a range of bacteria that differ in the efficiency with which they convert sugar to acid and the type of acid they produce. The most efficient bacteria produce high levels of lactic acid. A quality silage inoculant contains crop specific strains of the most efficient lactic acid producing bacteria. These are added to the crop at harvest time to produce a high quality fermentation.

Applied correctly, Pioneer^® brand inoculants provide 100,000 colony forming units (CFU) of bacteria per gram of fresh forage. This is consistent with worldwide standards and is the level that has produced the benefits shown in the Pioneer^® brand inoculant trial programme.

Thermal imaging provides real-time heat distribution information across the feed-out face of the silage stack.

Heat emissions from the feed-out face can therefore be used as a measure of the extent of aerobic deterioration of the silage.

The lower temperature of the silage inoculated with 11G22 (see Figure 1) highlights an aerobic profile that minimises dry matter losses & locks in nutrients compared to that of an untreated silage stack (see Figure 2) with high nutrient losses.

Maximise the economic value of your end product by selecting the right inoculant that is & employing the right harvest management practices.