Getting more milk from your maize silage

Maximising the energy content of maize silage is the key to maximising the resultant performance output – whether milk or liveweight gain.

To help maize growers select the varieties with the greatest potential to produce high energy silage of superior feeding quality, a new accreditation system has been launched by seed breeder Limagrain UK.

Called 'LG Animal Nutrition' or LGAN, this new accreditation is awarded only to the very best varieties based on their potential to deliver silage of high nutritional value as well as all-round good yields and crop performance in the field.

Growers can select an LGAN variety and be confident that it is very good, if not excellent across a total of eight criteria, these are: early vigour, dry matter content (earliness) and yield, starch content and yield, metabolisable energy content and yield, and cell wall digestibility.

More litres per cow/day

Since the LGAN concept was first introduced into Europe in 2005, many trials have been carried out – both at independent research institutes and large scale on-farm tests. Typically, when compared to varieties with unimproved digestibility characteristics, LGAN varieties achieve milk yield increases of around 0.5 litres/day/cow.

In one of the scientifically conducted trials, carried out at the independent research centre, Schothurst Institute, in Holland, dairy cows were fed maize silage made either using an LGAN-accredited variety or a popular variety renowned for its yields.

Feeding maize silage made from the LGAN-accredited variety resulted in an extra 0.43litres of milk per cow per day. Milk protein content was also improved in cows fed the LGAN variety.

Economic benefits

Taking the example of a 100-cow herd, over a 300 day lactation period and a 25p milk price, this extra milk yield adds another £3,225 to the milk cheque.  So, simply changing the maize variety boosted cow performance and profitability. 

LGAN=High energy silage

In maize silage, the starch content and cell wall digestibility are the two key factors which affect the nutritional value to the animal.

Varieties which qualify for LGAN status have an improved digestibility of the stover as well as excellent starch potential. This results in a higher ME content and the ability to produce silage of a high energy density.

With the advent of the new LG Animal Nutrition accreditation, livestock farmers can improve animal performance and increase milk revenues.

The LGAN radar system

The eight performance parameters which form the basis for LGAN accreditation are best illustrated in the form of a radar diagram.

These eight characteristics are compared against the average of all the varieties on the latest NIAB Descriptive List.

A maize variety is assessed for its potential to become LGAN-accredited based on its performance over the latest five years of Limagrain’s own UK trials combined with BSPB/NIAB trials. Altogether this amounts to information from up to 12 sites per year across the country – so the data is taken from across a range of different growing conditions – from very marginal to very favourable sites, and across different growing seasons.

The first LG maize varieties to qualify for LGAN accreditation are Ambition and Activate. Both are capable of producing exceptional yields of starch and have improved cell wall digestibility, ultimately delivering very high metabolisable energy levels, and thus higher milk returns.

Activate and Ambition will make their debut on the NIAB List in 2013. They are commercially available for the 2012 growing season. 

Further information on LGAN and Activate and Ambition can be found in the publication “An introduction  to feeding nutritionally superior maize silage” available to download as pdf.