Benefit of silage additive

[Sandhill]

When you buy a forage (loading) wagon you might be offered the choice of adding a dosing unit, for which you get to pay. If you do add a dosing unit, you can then buy silage additive, and again you pay. I wondered why you would spend the money, transport the silage additive, bother to fill the dosing unit...what do you get out of your investment and effort? Somehow you either did it just to be realistic and got no benefit, or you had to get more silage to feed your cows as the chances of "better" silage that would give a greater increase in productivity per liter of silage seemed pretty far fetched. I searched a lot to find out what you get from using silage additive, and finding nothing helpful delved into it.

You could get a benefit of a greater grass capacity in the forage wagon, for example a 24500 l wagon holding more than 24500 l, but you don't.

You could get a benefit of greater addition to the silo when you dump your grass, for example dumping 24500 l into an empty silo and having more than 24500 l in the silo, but you don't.

What you DO get is more grass in your wagon from the same mowed row. If silage additive is turned on you get about 7% more grass in your wagon. In my experiment, from the same row of mowed grass, I got 11100 l of grass in the wagon without using silage additive and 12500 l when using silage additive.

I have not experimented with blades in the forage wagon, but again having blades might be an option when you purchase the wagon and the blades do wear out and require replacement with new blades which you purchase. Presumably you also get some benefit for your expense and effort from the blades too.

Farm on