Alkalage - High dry matter, high energy, alkaline preserved forage.

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Good quality Alkalage is a high energy forage made from a cereal crop (typically wheat or barley but could be triticale, oats or maize) allowed to mature to a high dry matter - ideally in excess of 72% and typically 80% dry matter. Maturity ensures the highest levels of starch and dry matter are achieved compared to cutting earlier for conventional fermented whole-crop silage.

When making Alkalage, the cereal crop is cut with a forage harvester fitted with a specialist small grain processing mill which cracks the mature grain to ensure digestion by ruminants. The cutting height of the straw can be adjusted to vary the quality of the forage according to the class of stock for which it is intended.

The chopped material is taken to a stack where Home n' Dry pellets are added which reliably:

• Preserves it by eliminating micro organisms
• Increases the pH by the production of ammonium salts
• Improves digestibility of the straw
• Increases the protein content of the crop, typically by 5%

The preserved crop is not silage - there is no fermentation so no energy is lost to the production of acids. Rather than preserving material by reducing the pH to about 4, pH is increased to about 8 - which is much more friendly to fibre digesting bacteria in the rumen which prefer a pH around 6. Once preserved the material is very stable and much less attractive to vermin than whole-crop and maize silage. Use of the Alkalage technique gives a very wide harvesting window compared to whole-crop. Mature crops can be harvested for Alkalage on days when it would be too wet to combine grain without the need for expensive drying.

Alkalage gives dairy farmers with run-off blocks the opportunity to produce high dry matter, home-grown, traceable forage which can be carted more cost effectively than conventional low dry matter forages like grass and maize silage. It offers arable farmers the potential of an alternative cash crop which can be harvested in damp conditions with potentially good cash flow and without the need for additional grain storage. Perhaps more importantly, Alkalage offers ruminants (dairy cows, finishing beef cattle and sheep) a high dry matter feed which excels in respect to rumen health and safety.

For more information on Alkalage and the benefits it can provide you and your stock please contact Winslow Feeds & Nutrition on 0800 00 77 66 or email rob.derrick@winslowltd.co.nz