FORAGE VARIABILITY

Year by year, even day by day the dry matter and the nutritional values contained in forage changes. Forage variability cannot be avoided but can be MANAGED

The variability of feed, with particular reference to TMR main ingredients (grass and maize silage), is one of the principal issues that dairy farmers deal with on a daily basis. Different types of grass in the silage pit,  weather conditions during the silage making process and the experience of the operator can dramatically affect the quality of the silage produced. When the silage pit is opened another variability comes into play as the weather again affects the silage.

When the diet is formulated the nutritionist bases his/her decisions on analyses of cherry picked,  random samples. With this system there are three main issues:

1. the first being the time it takes to obtain the results, usually in the range of a few days; in the meantime the conditions may have changed affecting the real nutritional values and the intervention of the nutritionist may be based on information that is no longer accurate.

2. The quantity of the feed analyzed is limited and may not be representative of the real situation.

3. Every single analysis is a cost that the dairy farmer incurs.

The solution that Greenforage proposes is based on the onboard analyzer NIR PrecisionFEEDING™ produced by Dinamica Generale, leader in the field of the production of portable and on-board analyzers. It drastically reduces variability, monitors the performance of animals in terms of daily production and optimizing costs avoiding human error. The PrecisionFEEDING NIR onboard analyzer can be installed on the bucket of the front loaders, on the shear grab telescopic handler, on the scaper of self propelled machines or directly on the feed mixers. It performs a real time NIR analysis of the feed picked and right away it adjust the recipe accordingly.

Proper feeding management means:

• Reducing refused quantity
• Feeding the herd appropriately
• Saving on  concentrates and feed costs
• Increasing milk production
• Improving milk quality
• Increasing the level of fat and protein in the milk
• Increased animal’s health

 Greenforage Solution: every time the farmer picks up silage  from the silage pit the Precion Feeding system performs a real time NIR analysis. In this way not only the amount of dry matter, but also the amount of protein, crude fat, hash, ADF, NDF and other nutrients are all detected. Based on the information obtained the system interacts with the feed mixer or with the anaerobic digestor and adjusts the recipe in real time: this means that only what’s needed is fed to the cows and to the biogas digestor optimizing results and reducing waste. Accuracy of the system is assured thanks to 2 elements: the calibration curves, developed over 10 years experience by Dinamica Generale with thousands of readings. When installed we perform an initial verification matching the initial readings of the system with wet chemistry analysis results of the same samples. If needed the calibration is “fine tuned” and alligned with the results of the wet chemistry analysis.

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