Variability of the amounts and quality of silage from wrapped bales harvested on a farm

摘要

The totality of the herbage cut on a Belgian farm was monitored for three years, both quantitatively and qualitatively; all of it was used as pre-wilted silage in wrapped round bales. This gave an image of the variations within and between years encountered in constituted forage stores. The variations in amounts and in quality are considerable. Protein contents of wrapped round bales varied from 12 to 21% in the DM, energy values from 0.72 to 0.93 UFL (feed unit for lactation). The 'OEB', a measure of the excess or shortage of nitrogen in the rumen, varied from a deficit of 10 g/kg DM to an excess of 66; in the first case, extra nitrogen should be supplied; in the second case, extra energy. The quality of the forage stored on the farm varied from year to year. Farmers have to achieve the best quality by adequate vegetation, fertilization, and cutting schedules, but they remain all the same dependent on factors such as the yearly weather, which they can hardly control, if at all. The amount of forage harvested and its quality however can be well known, so that lots of forage differing by their quality can be established, which will then be used differently.