Evaluation studies in the development of a commercial bacterial inoculant as an additive for grass silage |
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| Authors: | R W J STEEN E F UNSWORTH† H I GRACEY‡ S J KENNEDY‡ R ANDERSON† D J KILPATRICK§ |
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| Institution: | Department of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, The Queen's University of Belfast, and Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland;Experimental Husbandry Department, Greenmount College of Agriculture and Horticulture, and Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland;The Agricultural Institute of Northern Ireland, Hillsborough, Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland and The Queen's University of Belfast, UK |
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| Abstract: | Two 2×2 factorial experiments are described in which a bacterial inoculant being developed as a silage additive and containing a strain of Lacto-bacillus plantarum (Ecosyl, ICI plc) was evaluated at two harvests (18 July and 30 September 1985) of two swards (perennial ryegrass and permanent pasture) in difficult ensiling conditions. On each occasion erbage was ensiled with and without inoculant using two 0·5–t capacity steel tower silos per treatment. The contents of the two replicate silos per treatment were combined for feeding to cross-bred wethers in digestibility and metabolizable energy (ME) partition studies.
Overall, inoculated herbage declined in pH post-harvest at a faster rate than control herbage (p<0·001) and three out of the four inoculated silages had lower pH, ammonia-N, acetate and alcohol and higher residual soluble carbohydrate content (p<0·001) than control. Significantly higher digestibility of nutrients (P<0·05) was found in three of the inoculant-treated silages and these also had significantly higher ME values than control (P<0·001), (10·58 and 8·77 MJ kg tol DM?1 for the treated and untreated silages respectively). The use of inoculant on herbage of only moderate ensiling potential therefore, produced significant improvements in fermentation quality and feeding value over control. |
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