Choose wisely from additives

There is a huge range of additives on the market. They can briefly be described as acids, sugars, inoculants, enzymes, and salts.

Based on Teagasc trials, formic acid products are the best additives when ensiling in difficult conditions. Sulphuric acid also improves fermentation in difficult conditions, but has never been proved to improve animal performance.

Inoculants result in proven economic improvement in animal performance under a wide range of conditions. Traditionally, we were led to believe that inoculants only made good silage better, but were of little use in poor conditions. However, there is a lot of data to show that an effective inoculant improves animal performance even in poor fermentation conditions.