Silage and Milk Production, a Comparison Between Grass Silages Made With and Without Formic Acid

Abstract

Two grass sUages made in June and two made in September, all from the same field, were compared in a 16-week winter-feeding experiment with 12 Ayrshire cows. The silages were fed ad lib. with a supplement of barley and groundnut eake. One of the sUages made in June and one made in September had been treated with \ gallon of formie acid per ton of herbage when cut, whereas the other two silages were untreated. The contents of digestible organic matter in the sQage DM made with and without the acid additive were 67-4 and 63-8%, respectively, in the June silage, and 66-1 and 62-7% in the September sUage. The intakes of silage and total DM were higher in the treatments containing the acid-treated silages than in those containing the untreated sflages. The mean daily milk yields from cows fed on the sUages made with and without the additive were 36-3 and 33-8 lb (16-5 and 15-3 kg), respectively, for sflages made in June, and 35-4 and 34-1 lb (16-0 and 15-5 kg) for those made in September. The solids-not-fat (S.N.F.) contents of the milk averaged 8-60 and 8-50% respectively, from the silages with and without the additive. It is concluded that the silage with the formic-acid additive was superior to the untreated silage as a feed for dairy cows.

Utilization of Formic Acid Treated Sorghum-Sudan Silage by Dairy Cows

“…The lower butterfat percentage of convert from ME (NAS-NRC, t966), assuming an enelgy value of 5000 kcal/kg w(ight chmge (Bath el al., 1965 _ _There is agreement between the present results and those of Derbyshire and Gordon (1970) and Castle and Watson (1970) …”

“…Castle and Watson (1970) also showed an increase in intake of formic acid-treated silages over untreated.…”

The effect of cutting time of grass silage in primary growth and regrowth and the interactions between silage quality and concentrate level on milk production of dairy cows

“…Practical experience and experimental results (Castle and Watson, 1970;Peoples and Gordon, 1989;Heikkilä et al, 1998;Khalili et al, 2005) have suggested inferior intake and production potential of RG silages compared to those made from PG. This effect may partly have been due to analytical problems as at least in vitro pepsin cellulase method overestimates the regrowth silage digestibility, unless separate correction equations are used for PG and RG grass material ( (Huhtanen et al, 2006a).…”

“…Further, in these studies the season (primary growth vs. regrowth) effects have often been confounded by differences in digestibility and silage fermentation characteristics. Castle and Watson (1970) and Khalili et al (2005) observed that silage intake and milk production were higher with silages made from the primary growth than from the regrowth of grass, but in both cases, regrowth silages were lower in digestibility. However, Peoples and Gordon (1989) and Heikkilä et al (1998) used regrowth grass silages of similar or higher digestibility than in primary growth and yet silage intake and milk production were higher when silage made from primary growth was fed.…”

Organic Acid Determination on Treated and Untreated Corn Silage

“…Volatile fatty acid treatment of silage has been used in Europe for a number of years to produce high quality silage without wilting the crop before ensiling (Drysdale 1968), Castle and Watson (1970) 105-lU (Jan, 1973) silage (Waldo et al 1968(Waldo et al , 1969(Waldo et al , and 1971 To determine moistrlre content, silage samples were dried at 72 C using a forced hot-air drying oven.…”