The Science of Silage: Maximize Nutrients, Minimize Loss

In this episode, experts from Agri-King explore the science behind successful silage fermentation and management practices that preserve forage quality. Learn why oxygen exclusion, proper packing, and effective feedout are essential to minimizing dry matter loss and maximizing nutrient preservation. The discussion also highlights how microbial inoculants like Silo-King can improve fermentation and help producers get the most value from every ton of forage.

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Transcript

Chris Radke (01:30)
Hello and welcome to AK Podcast, where we explore science and nutrition behind livestock care and management with the best and the brightest in business. I'm your host, Chris Radke, part of the Sales Department here at Agri-King. And with me today is the Director of Field Services and a member of the Sales Management Team, Mr. Mike Downson. Hey Mike, how you doing?

Mike (01:48)
Outstanding Chris. Having a good week.

Chris Radke (01:50)
Yes, I am, of course. Wonderful.

Mike (01:52)
Well Well

So

our t our topic today, we're recording this the middle of middle of midsummer, I guess you'd call it the twenty-six. In the world of ruminant livestock, nutrition, forage production. This is about halftime. At this point, we've got a lot of the hay crop, annual forages are well over half done. And for most of the country, we are in that calm before the storm when it comes to corn silage harvest.

So we thought that was a really good time to do a podcast and review, discuss the basics of silage silage production with some special emphasis on that fermentation process. So today on the podcast, we've got a repeat guest and a first timer. We're welcoming back AgriKing's director, Silo-King, Jason Awesome. And our newcomer has actually been with Agri-King longer than any of the rest of us.

is Dave Spangler, who in addition to being the Vice President of Research and Development at Agri-King, is also essentially the godfather of the Silo-King line of products for Agri-King. So with each of you we'll start with Jason. Jason, you've been on several podcasts, but in case someone's never seen you before, a little bit about your background, what you do at Agri-King, and then the same from you, Dave, please.

Jason Alsum (03:21)
Alright, thank you, Mike. Happy to be here. always good to chit-chat about fun stuff like forage. so yeah, I've been with Agri-King 17 years. Previous to that, I wa I grew up on a small farm and did some 10, 15 years in business and then found Agri-King and have been here for 17 years. I started out in the field.

learning about forage and working with farmers directly and now we've graduated into this role and I'm lucky to work with people to help them make better forage all over the country and sometimes in other parts of the world. So it's really cool to work with a company like Agri-King that does put forage first, puts a big emphasis on making good quality forage so that farmers can be more profitable. So that's me.

Mike (04:12)
Well perfect.

Dave, go ahead.

Dave Spangler (04:16)
Alright, yeah, thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me today. as you've alluded to, I've been with Agri-King thirty-eight years now. I had the pleasure of of leading a very talented group of researchers and technicians as as the VP here of Research and Development and Laboratory Services. I'm for better or worse, I'm a University of Iowa graduate and an old school microbiologist. meaning b old school meaning that

PCR was just three letters of the alphabet when I started.

Mike (04:47)
Ha ha ha.

Dave Spangler (04:48)
and and that's very commonplace today with our with our with the the researches we have in our in our group today. before joining Anchorine I was on staff the University of I Iowa Hospital and Clinics as a researcher and I primarily worked in the in the area of the of the immune system, the human immune system.

And that did give me some skills that I use s yet today. back in 1988 when I started, I started as a microbiologist and I focused primarily on forage quality and forage research. That's why I was brought in. And since that point I've been very closely involved with Agger Kings, biological products, research and development of those products.

products and and additives for the hay and silages like we'll talk about today, direct fed microbes, probiotics, enzyme supplements, manure slurry additives and and and any you know, additives for addressing mycotoxin issues. So anything that's microbial based or touches a microbe, and that's a lot of things in today's world and especially in in the AG research and AG the AG world. So

Th there's a lot of things going on there. So thanks for having me.

Mike (06:07)
Well, appreciate both of you joining us today. Let's start maybe with some an absurdly simple concept. There's just about nowhere in the entire world where livestock can graze very high quality forage 365 days a year. We are going to have to store forage to have a profitable livestock operation. What are some of the advantages that you two see?

By storing that forage as silage and and embracing the idea using fermentation to keep a crop.

Dave Spangler (06:48)
You want me to start? I'll I'll give it a whirl first and then I'll take all your bling from you, Jason.

Jason Alsum (06:53)
Yeah, thanks.

Dave Spangler (06:55)
So so you know, looking at ten thousand foot view of this, in the climates that we market in, adequate amounts of like fresh forage are only available from the spring or late spring until early autumn, right? So we have to preserve those forages either as a baled hay or as a silage like we're talking about today.

And and we have to do that in order to lock in the nutritional value and and create reliable feed sources regardless of that weather or the time of the year. So by ensiling that wetter crop in a silo or a pile or or into you know, a bunker, or even wrap bales, y you gotta you have to do that and we'll probably talk about the the

you know, the proper packing and and and and and things like that later in the podcast. But that way if we if we get that right, then certain bacteria which which near and dear to my heart would be lactic acid bacteria, they they have the ability to ferment the available sugars in the in that forage and that'll create acids. And that acidification process helps preserve the forage's overall mass.

So it's so it's dry matter per se, and also it's nutrients. You we can lock in those nutrients and so they don't continue to change and they don't decay. So that way the farm can have a reliable feed source throughout the year that he can he she can can utilize when feed becomes scarce or you you can't you can't, you know, grow it fresh. So, you know, silages of of like

plant whole plant corn or corn itself or wheat or various other, you know, grasses or or alfalfa. That's the predominant things that we we ensile here and and utilize here in in North America for the dairy and the beef beef cattle.

Mike (08:51)
Perfect. Well well Jason, I'm sure he left a little bit on the bone for you. Where do

Jason Alsum (08:56)
Yeah.

Mike (08:56)
you where do you see the value of embracing making silage as a way to preserve feed?

Jason Alsum (09:02)
Well really the cool thing is we can see hundreds of years of harvest practices

All still going on in the United States. You've got Amish communities which are still making corn shocks and pitching hay onto a wagon. I can remember seeing the claws that come down and pick up hay and bring it up and drop it into a haymow. these different harvest practices have been going on for years because of exactly what you outlined. We can't we can't let cows on pasture 12 months out of the year and have them, we have to supplement it. we've just gotten better.

As farms have progressed and technology has come into place, we have learned really what we're after, and what we've learned, and what you can see from those communities that use hundreds of year-old harvest practices to the latest and greatest with huge equipment. We've gotten better at preserving nutrients, and that's what we're looking to do for those animals. And the better we can get at preserving nutrients, making it very available and easy to use.

Use so that the dairyman or the farmer can easily and efficiently get it in front of the animal in a way that they can eat it when they want at their leisure, keep them full, put good nutrition together. That's what we're talking about today. And we have gotten really good at using bags, piles, silos, different ways to ferment feed, and we've studied all of them. So it's cool. It's cool that we're able

to take a a crop out of the field and really preserve it really well and and have the animals get a lot of nutrition out of it.

Mike (10:48)
Let's let's turn this back over to Dave. Take us through the process of a good fermentation, along with pointing out where some things can go wrong at different steps, please.

Dave Spangler (11:01)
Okay, yeah, sure. so let's the ensiling process explained. To to reiterate what we mentioned earlier, ensiling is essentially the process of rapidly acidifying the forage crop, whether it be a grass or a corn or a wheat or alfalfa, to preserve that crop. As Jason said, preserve its nutrients, right? So the livestock can can eat it over the subsequent months when when it's not conducive to be able to grow fresh feed.

So the goal is to rapidly convert those sugars into acids to prevent spoilage. And it kind of uses a four-step method. The whole ensiling process is is break it down in simplified terms into four steps that relies on removing oxygen. And I'm sure we're going to talk about that in depth as we go along through this podcast. So the first step of ensiling would be called the the aerobic process or the aerobic phase or the

the breathing phase, if you will. So what happens right if the crop is harvested and put into storage, whether it be a clamp or a pit or a bunker, whatever the case might be, the plant's still breathing, right? It's still using up any kind of remaining trapped oxygen. The our goal, the goal is to to rapidly

rapidly and completely get rid of that oxygen as quickly as possible. So make this aerobic phase as short as possible. So the aim is to get rid of that oxygen quickly and efficiently and stop that plant from wasting its own sugar and and all the other nutrients that would go that also would go away through the respiration process. So the longer this phase, this aerobic phase is, the more opportunity for dry matter loss and energy loss occurs. So

That's that's because the plant continues to respire and also you got microbial respiration. So both of those we can stop if if we you know

do good packing and and you maybe use some additives that tie up that oxygen get rid of that oxygen. So that's that's that we want to make that as short as possible, that breathing phase, and then we can jump into fermentation. Once that that oxygen is gone then fermentation can occur and that's the real that's the real crux of of fermentation is that acidification. That's where the the good bacteria lactic acid bacteria again near and dear to my heart those lactic acid bacteria for lack of

A

better word, eat or consume those plant sugars and convert them to acid. They do that hopefully very efficiently. You know, there's certain bacteria out there that do it more efficiently than others, and we want to utilize those. We want to promote those. So the LABs, these lactic acid bacteria, metabolically convert those sugars into acids, and in the most efficient and the most energy-dense and strongest acid that can be produced is lactic acid.

we can talk about that at at a at a later time or in a different podcast of why lactic acid is so important. But that acid lowers the pH and it it helps preserve f preserve that that forage mass because it the acidification

Mike (14:12)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Spangler (14:14)
stops unwanted microbes from growing, like maybe some E. coli or bacillus or or some yeast or things like that.

That also stops that acidification stops the plant cells themselves from respiring and and and also it stops the plant enzymes from breaking down the plant further, like the ashes to ashes dust to dust scenario. It it it'll it'll break down itself into, you know, the proteins will get broken down, the carbohydrates would be broken down and and utilized through respiration. We don't want that to occur. So

That that's the fermentation phase. And then f then the next we get into storage or the stable phase. once the the acid level is high enough, then it gives kinda like what we call feedback inhibition. It stop tells the bacteria, stop. There's no reason to make any more acid. They're they're still there, but they there's no reason to make any more acid. The the pH is down at a point where where you know we've we've ceased respiration, we've ceased underwanted

you know, competition from bad bacteria or mold or yeast or things like that. So now we're stable. So the goal is to to to get that done as quickly as possible and then that forage is essentially stable. It can be utilized or fed for many, many many months or even years if if need be. And then well then there's the feed out phase. And if we've done all these other things right, then that feed out phase if we could use good management practices

and and keep a clean face, then that that that face, you know, we can have a reliable feed source that we can feed off of again from that many, many months. So that's that's kinda you know, the the the key things there. Maybe the to reiterate, maybe the key requirements for success would be sugar content. You know, the plants gotta have the if there's adequate sugars there, then there's adequate amount of of

resources for the b the bacteria to utilize that sugar to make acid. So, you know, a lot of guys will use and maybe maybe Jason can can talk about this too, people will use scissor cuttings and or they'll even use bricks, you know, bri bricks refractometers to look what the sugar content is.

Jason Alsum (16:41)
Yeah? Yeah.

Dave Spangler (16:42)
so

Mike (16:43)
So

so even occasionally even a the best managed farm will have something break down and a load or a truck has to sit even overnight before it can be unloaded. Is it that respiration aspect that is creating all that heat because as it sits on that wagon it has oxygen or is it something different?

Dave Spangler (17:10)
No, you're exactly right, Mike. It's it's respiration process. The plant itself is continuing to respire and any kind of microbes that have a access to oxygen are also attempting you know, they're they're also respiring. So that respiration process is is the breakdown or utilization of sugars through the respiration pathway and and the end products are heat.

Carbon dioxide, right? And so that that's the problem. And then we want now th the upside is I guess if it is broken down and it's been treated on that you know, with with some kind of you know you know, bacteria that would help limit that respiration, you know, that that is beneficial.

Mike (17:54)
So

Just had a complete brain freeze. I didn't think can't think what I was gonna ask you next. So when you you talk about heat and this may be almost too simplistic once again, but it isn't the worst part of that forage and fiber that we burn to generate that heat, is it?

Dave Spangler (18:23)
No, exactly. It's always the it it's never the logs, if you will. It's n i of the tree that burn up, but it's always the

Jason Alsum (18:28)
Mm.

Dave Spangler (18:31)
the leaves and the twigs that yeah you would start a fire with, right? And and you can equate those those leaves and twigs to to the sugar, the really fermentable sugars. Just

Nature doesn't wanna expend any more energy than it has to, so it's gonna utilize the the the path of least resistance, which is those those those simple sugars. They're gonna utilize those. Those, you know, the respiration microbes are gonna utilize those before they would ever, you know, start to s secrete some kind of enzyme to break down the the logs, to break down the the the really complex fiber. So the bad news is that if you utilize those up, then there's less for the lactic acid bacteria.

t to to make you know, to use to to make acids quickly and efficiently. So then you have to you know then then they have to rely on enzymes or something else to help break that that down.

Mike (19:25)
Okay. So essentially if we could figure out a way to burn lignin, we wouldn't mind so much, but since we're losing the best of the best, this is a big problem.

Dave Spangler (19:35)
Right, yep, yep. It can be a real big problem, right? So yep, exactly. Yeah yeah, I w we're we're looking at things like ligninases or lacases all the time, right? I mean th those are those are the things that c they could help with that process down the road, during later in the fermentation process or later later in the siling process, but not not initially.

Mike (19:59)
That's a that's a nice, concise and understandable trip through the fermentation process. We've you know, Dave Jason, Dave has hammered a couple times on the necessity of excluding oxygen. On farms that usually winds up being called Is It Packed Well Enough? And I'd like to go through and and these first two will probably hit pretty quickly, but I'd like to go through both upright silos and

silage bags and then drive over piles, piles, bunkers, and talk about the management we need to employ to get that oxygen excluded. So let's start with upright silos. What would be some of your tips for trying and and if you want to maybe even start, Jason, if you'd rather start on why we need to get this packed well, you you take it from here and go the direction you want to go.

Jason Alsum (20:56)
Yeah. Well, you know, more and more I I try to drive this home by drawing a correlation from animal feed to human feed. And we're

We're getting we're getting closer to understanding that. Mike's or Dave's talked a lot about microbes and bad microbes, and if you don't preserve something, well, go back to the industrial age, they didn't know how to preserve food when we started moving to cities and people got sick left and right because they weren't they didn't have refrigeration, they didn't have freezers, you know, they had to learn how to handle food. And then shortly after that, President Truman put the FDA in place, put right

Regulations in place, we started to learn how to handle food. Interestingly enough, Clarence

Chris Radke (21:40)
Okay.

Jason Alsum (21:42)
Birdseye was a hermit up in northern Canada and pulled fish out of the ice and at 40 below zero they froze immediately. And he figured out that's a really good way to preserve food is to quickly flash freeze it. And now you can still buy birdseye products in the in the store today. It just we're and when I correlate that to farmers and

And animal production, we use the word feed hygiene. What are we after? Same thing that happened to humans when there are microbes and molds and yeasts and and junk in the feed, it causes upsets in this in the stomach of those animals as well. So I try to talk about feed hygiene, and Dave talked about a lot of the science of it, and really it's about.

Preserving, ziplocking. I mean, what do we do with our food? Let's let's draw those correlations. We vacuum seal our high-dollar steaks and wrap them three times so they don't get freezer burned. We when we take a bag of chips, we seal it up, we press all the air out of it, we seal that ziplock bag because we don't want to eat stale chips. So now let's transition that into animal. If we talk about feed hygiene.

Those animals don't want to eat mold and yeast and funky haylage that's got black slime in it and farmers are starting to realize this is important for animals.

Now, when you look at structures, Dave talked about a lot of it. It's it's oxygen, it's getting the oxygen out so it can't respire. And then the acids will change and preserve the feed. So just quickly to run through some of those, yeah, the upright silo was was one of the first probably technologies to really preserve feed. Does a great job. The key things there are

Getting it in in a good speed, cut length and moisture is a big one. If you put dry feed into a silo, it's just not gonna pack. A silo has to it takes the force of the feed and presses it down. And if we have better moisture, it's it's gonna press better, it's gonna fill those gaps better, we're gonna exclude oxygen much better. but you still have a good amount of waste usually on the top of a silo where it doesn't pack, and that's why.

The guys will tell you they go up there to level off the silo, and that feed is hot. It's probably 110 120 degrees because that oxygen is respiring on the top of the silo. So you got to get it leveled off quickly. If you aren't going to use it right away, guys will put a cover on there to try to exclude oxygen. then you come to the bag. baggers can be tough. There's there's a lot going on there. I have worked with a lot of different bags, and it's nothing's more frustrating than get spotty.

Mold in that bag. So when you're working with a bag, again, cut length and moisture are important, but I've learned that you've got to have the knives sharpened where those knives pass through, that gap can't be worn so that it's it's not breaking it up, and then you get larger chunks in the bag, and that keeps oxygen in there. The type of the size of tractor and the speed you put it in. If you put it in too fast and you don't have a big enough tractor to press it into that bag.

Right, you get a bag where you can shove your arm in and oxygen can travel ahead of you. so bags bags can be a challenge as well. when you're when you're looking at hay or baleage, the wrapping is very important. We're after excluding oxygen in all of these situations. then you get to bunkers and and piles, and that's where I think most of the industry is going, right? You want me to touch on that a little bit?

Mike (25:35)
Yeah,

I think 'cause I think I think I mean we certainly work on farms. Agri-King has valuable clients on farms of all different sizes, but we are certainly at a point where there are more tons of feed put up in the United States in bunkers and piles than probably all other farms combined at this point. And I I I think in some ways it's it's nice. It it can be actually one of the

one of the areas that gives you the most control. Like you said with upright silos that no, those top ten feet, I don't care how many kids you get up there running around on top of the silo, they're just not gonna pack very well. But with a bunker, you can bring some more tools to bear on it, if you will, but there's also the ability to make a lot more mistakes on bunkers and piles because it comes down

It comes down to some finer points of management that some places do and some people come a little short on. So let's let's dig rather intensively into that that field.

Jason Alsum (26:39)
Yeah.

And and I will touch on Dave Dave mentioned quality and sugars and and the the better quality forage we bring in from the field, the better it's gonna store. It's gonna ferment better, it's gonna store better, moisture

Chris Radke (26:56)
Okay.

Jason Alsum (26:57)
is important. Guys got most of that. So when we're gonna get into the detail little bit more on packing and things like that, again I'll draw a correlation.

Speed

is so important. If you're taking a break from harvest and you have a salad and you eat half the salad, you set it on the armrest of your truck and it's 90 degrees, and you come back two hours later, are you still gonna eat that salad? No. Because it's gonna be wilted, it's gonna be slimy, it's gonna be gross.

Well guess what? The same thing happens if you take a chopper box full of haylage and leave it sit there for a couple hours with hay air in it, it turns really quickly. We're there's so many correlations to what we do with our food. What we do with our food is we seal it up, cover it, get it in the fridge as soon as we can. So speed of

Getting this feed, this high-quality feed that we've grown into a structure, eliminating the oxygen, is very important. So, yes, choppers, wagons, getting it done, balers, wrapping the bales, you know, you can go to all these different types of harvests, it has to be done quickly. So

We're learning that over time. But as we get into the piles and bunkers, I want to touch on, you know, alleviating oxygen. we're we're getting better at this also. when I started fifteen years ago, guys were happy if they had a density of

you know, twelve to fifteen, they thought they were doing good. now your progressive farmers are getting a pack density that's twenty, over twenty. They're they're doing all they can to get the oxygen out. So let's touch on a few things that are important.

Mike (28:48)
Before you go there, let's just back up a half step.

Jason Alsum (28:53)
Okay.

Mike (28:54)
Just describe for everybody how

Jason Alsum (28:56)
Mm.

Mike (28:57)
you're measuring that density. Not not

Jason Alsum (28:59)
Yeah.

Mike (29:00)
not just what the number is. I mean, are you counting the number of loads that go into how many square feet? Is it a math problem? Explain how we're actually measuring that.

Jason Alsum (29:10)
Yeah. So we we couple of things are important and you're able to measure how well you did on your storage structure.

One is temperature. We use temperature probes. You can put them in the pile. You can you can monitor the first several days. You can monitor it right after you're done packing and see a difference in temperature. That's how oxygen is reacting if it's

not packed right. So temperature is one, and then the density really we don't manage we don't measure that until you open that face. Whether it's a pile or a bunker, you gotta have a good open face. You're into it a little.

ways and then we take a two-inch pipe on a drill and we drill into that face.

And we have the calculations that show, you know, based on that circumference, and then we do the moisture and we weigh the grams that we take out of there, and then we can tell you what your as fed density would be. That's with the moisture in it. But the real number we're we're logging and tracking is a dry matter density where we take all the moisture out of it and we tell you how many pounds of dry matter you have per square inch, and that's how we are.

So

Mike (30:30)
Perfect. Now go back

to where you were. I just wanted to be sure everyone understood what we meant.

Jason Alsum (30:33)
Yep. Yep.

No, no, that's really good. so when you're bringing that feed in, there are several factors that help you get better density. you can bring it in too fast. You have to you have to line all these things up. If you've got three choppers working in one pack tractor, you got a problem there too. So you have to line this all up so that there's five factors that I'm gonna touch on. The thickness, the layers.

How f how thin you spread it, the weight of what you're putting on that pile. There's all kinds of different calculations for that. How to build the pile. You gotta have a plan for what we call a progressive wedge or how you're gonna build it front to back.

And then how you have to packing procedures would be, you know, driving the whole surface and making multiple passes. So as we go through some of those things, I'll just run through some of those and then I'll get into get into what that means when you get better density.

So six inch layers is the goal. and this gets this is easier said than done. I get it. I can stand here and tell guys you need six inch layers, but then I go out and I watch structures.

Man, you got this huge tractor with a 14-foot blade on a rounded pile. Well, how do you right? Every pile is not perfectly flat, so you got angles to work with. But we do our best to keep thin layers spread. Because you cannot lay down two-foot

Of haylage and get that packed properly. Adding weight to that doesn't compensate for a thin layer. So we want thin layers and and a good pack guy to get the thin layers. Here's here's an example. I had a farm that I went out to and they had spotty mold in the bunker, and I was all concerned about it because I thought we did a good job. And the guy, after we talked for a little while, he said, yeah, my uncle packed that one and he was dropping big wads of feed and we couldn't.

Get it packed,

Mike (32:45)
Yeah.

Jason Alsum (32:45)
and right where he explained that they had mold because he dropped a big wad of feed and just drove over it once, and there's gonna be oxygen penetration there because that density isn't gonna happen. So thin layers are very important. Tractor weight, there's a number of different ways to calculate that, and you know, in some farms it works, in some farms it doesn't. There's a rule of 18, but the more popular one is probably the rule.

Of

18. Sorry, I'm moving too fast. You take the the weight of the tractor divide it by eighteen, and then you get how many minutes you're supposed to be on the pile. So just to keep it simple, most of that math with the tractors we're using today, you should be packing about a half a minute for every ton of wet feed that comes in.

Well,

start thinking about that. It's a twenty-ton load, a half a minute, you should pack for ten minutes. That's not just pushing the feed around, that's packing for ten minutes. Well, that isn't always feasible, so we have to have a plan that works on the farm. And then the rule of eight hundred, that tells you you take how many tons per hour are coming into the bunker or pile.

And you want 800 pounds on that, so you want eight hundred pounds of packing weight per ton of forage. So you do that math, and you know the example I have in front of me, you have 45 tons per hour coming in, you need 36,000 tons or 36,000 pounds on that pile. Well

Dave Spangler (34:31)
Sure.

Jason Alsum (34:32)
Again, you look at that. If you have today's equipment, if you have two choppers, you're probably getting closer to a hundred tons an hour coming into that pile. And also you got to have two pack tractors and

Chris Radke (34:48)
What's

Jason Alsum (34:48)
a push tractor just to do a decent job. So you have to kind of plan these things out, use some of these tools.

And and you can't assume that the push tractor the the math they give you from Cornell here is that the pushing tractor really only packs about half the time. So you gotta cut that weight calculation in half. So there's a lot of homework that you can do to get your the weight of the tractor right.

Mike (35:16)
When w just for s just for a rough rough number, what would let's take let's compare a three hundred plus horsepower four wheel drive row crop tractor weighted the way you would send one out and eight wheeler and articulated both of with blades, both of set up the pack. Ballpark the weight on each of those for me, please.

Jason Alsum (35:44)
boy, I think the biggest the biggest John Deere out there now is pushing sixty sixty thousand pounds. you know, and you got all stages in between. That's a big articulate with duals on it and a big blade. Might they might even be pushing seventy thousand pounds. so you get several of those on a pile, you're you're putting some weight down. So that's really good.

Mike (36:05)
Okay. Perfect.

Jason Alsum (36:08)
I'm not going to get into the other stuff. The only other thing I would say is please don't don't let the pack tractor stop. Just keep going. You know, it's after you get that pushed, that should be a necessity on farm. Let me just give you some numbers on what this correlates into. So this again, this is work from Keith Bolson that he did. And I've seen this bear bear out on farm.

If

you have, and this is a chart we can maybe put into the video later, but an average, what we call average or the lowest that I would want to see is a sixteen density, dry matter density. He's saying that the dry matter loss at 80 days on a 16 is 15%.

And if you get up to 18 it drops. If you get to 22, where I think the the majority of the better dairies are, you're at ten percent dry matter loss. That's five percent savings just on getting it packed the way that you should. So, you know, you take a ten thousand ton pile, which is pretty common, and you let's say just for easy numbers, that's worth fifty dollars a ton.

You can go higher, lower, whatever forge you want. That's a half a million dollars. You take five percent of a half a million dollars, you know, you're you're talking some real money just to put it easily pays for the cost of that. twenty-five thousand dollars just to get the pack better.

And that's only one return on investment for getting it packed well. Your nutrients are gonna be better, your your feed is gonna feed better. so really it's a no-brainer to to get the pack right, to get it sealed up, to get it put away, and to allow it to ferment properly.

Mike (38:05)
I think I think for some reason farmers are catching up, they're doing better, but they were quicker to realize they couldn't haul corn off a 12-row combine with 200 bushel gravity boxes nearly as efficiently as trailers. And

Jason Alsum (38:25)
Yep.

Mike (38:26)
the fascination with bigger, bigger, bigger choppers and more of them for a while

really outpaced people's ability to pack. I think you know, choppers are probably cooler than packing tractors, maybe. That was where you wanted to spend your money. But I do agree with you. I think it's I think there's more awareness. I think it's getting better.

Jason Alsum (38:51)
So

do you think again, going back to the correlation of food, how many of you buy name name brand freezer bags? Or do you just wrap it in cellophane when you put something the freezer? What if, you know, do we feel Ziploc or f sorry, vacuum sealing our food is better than a Ziploc?

All of these things make a difference too, and I have a study here that says an uncovered silage pile will lose 25% to dry matter loss.

If we put one layer of four or five mil plastic on there, that drops it down to 10 to 15% dry matter loss. And then if we go the next step better with an oxygen barrier and a good quality plastic, we're getting under 10% dry matter loss. So again, you can draw the correlation to food because people get it. The better plastic, the more you hold oxygen out, the better it preserves food longer. It's the same thing on a pile.

And this the understanding of that is still we're growing. There's still guys throwing tires that have wires hanging out of them, and

Dave Spangler (40:03)
Yeah.

Jason Alsum (40:04)
it's ripping the plastic, or they're sending their people up there and punching holes in the plastic. I one last story. I know we're getting long, but California likes to build these trapezoids. Sorry, California, not picking on you, but it's true. And then I see them hire a team to come out there and cover that pile, and they they tie their tires together.

These guys are walking around with cowboy boots making a hole every time they try to climb up this steep edge to put tires on. We gotta we we gotta do it all. It's gotta be sealed up.

Mike (40:38)
Well under the heading of and now a word from your sponsor.

Jason Alsum (40:42)
Ha ha ha.

Mike (40:44)
I'd like Jason, we we have never and will never position Silo-King to take the place of good management. This is not a miracle in a bag that is going to make someone who doesn't pack at all have zero dry matter loss and the world's a very happy place. At the same time, a quality product like Silo-King used correctly.

can play a big role in really maximizing this fermentation process. So to give Jason a chance to catch his breath, let's go back to Dave. And I mean you literally you most of your professional career you've been working on constantly improving Silo-King. I used to tell people all of our bags should probably have new and improved on them.

'Cause I don't think you've ever sent the exact same stuff out two years in a row without playing with some bacteria or an enzyme. So how are the four basic ingredients in Silo-King helping that fermentation process you described go as well as possible?

Dave Spangler (41:55)
Yeah, so thanks. you know, w I I I maybe I'll preface it and and Jason kinda alluded to this. One thing that a lot of people have heard me say is we're not alchemists. we can't turn lead into gold and we sure as heck can't turn poor feed going into the into the silo or the pile into great feed coming back out. So

Mike (42:16)
Mm.

Dave Spangler (42:16)
y number one you gotta set the stage by harvesting good forages, right? And then then Silo-King is a is a is a tool

that you can utilize just like good pack is is necessary, but silo-king is another tool that you can utilize. Silo-King the way we formulate it is for for good reason. We we use antioxidants and and potassium sorbate which is a preservative or as or a mold and yeast inhibitor. We we utilize those to to help you know tie up oxygen, stop respiration, stop

Unwanted microbes like your mold and your yeast, those things help that process along with good pack. So that helps test the set the stage and gets things right for the lactic acid bacteria. the lactic acid bacteria proprietary only to aggregate and we utilize those and we've we've checked them over many, many years over all these different forage types and see that they they run a really good relay race and people have heard me talk about this that

The bacteria hand off the process to the next one, to the next one, and that way you can direct and and take control of the fermentation from beginning to end. and those bacteria we we've done some really recent studies that are going to be published in the near term that that shows that they they control the process all the way through. We can watch their metabolism go all the way through, and then as we know it's our bacteria taking control of it. and and

What but I mean taking control, they can utilize the various sugars that the the enzymes have released in silo-king and or the natural plant sugars and they can use those to quickly and e efficiently make acids in in specifically lactic acid, which is again the strongest acid, drops the pH quickly and efficiently, quote unquote a flash fermentation that we get it done quickly and efficiently to lock in those nutrients. so that's kinda the the you know, the i again the

the ten thousand foot view of w how how and why we've we've formulated Silo-King the way we have. Antioxidants, antifungals, to help, you know stop the the respiration and stop unwanted microbes from from kinda utilizing those nutrients or taking any kind of control of the fermentation process. Enzymes and and the bacteria work hand in hand to

Jason Alsum (44:46)
Okay.

Dave Spangler (44:47)
to to to help

you know, create acids quickly and efficiently and also break break down some of the the complex fibers, the complex starches to to allow those to be utilized quickly and efficiently within the room into the cow. When ultimately we're making it as as Jason alluded to it a a we want a really high quality feed to go into our high quality animals to so they can perform very well.

Jason Alsum (45:12)
Yes?

Yep.

Mike (45:14)
So so Jason, we got the smart guy's answer. Let's let's get the common man's answer. Well

Jason Alsum (45:19)
Hmm. Hmm. What does that make mean? So, right,

it it's Dave has done a phenomenal job with Silo-King. It is it is a product like nothing else. And it ties into everything that I've talked about already. Speed of fermentation.

There's other products out there that are gonna get you down to a 4-2 pH and get you a decent lactic to acetic ratio. But I'm telling you, Silo-King does it in days and they're doing it in weeks. And it's a speed of preserving our nutrients that again gives us the return on investment. Just like I said, with these plastics saving dry matter loss, density saving dry matter loss, speed of fermentation saves dry matter loss, and nutrients.

And this my experience over time and using Silo-King, I've done the temperature, and just last year on corn silage with our new corn silage and grain product, I did some temperature studies, and that feed was fermented, stable, not heating anymore in three to five days. And other treated stuff is 10 to 14 days, untreated stuff is up to 21 days where it

It's still heating, it's still respiring. And this was same farm, same pack. So the design of Silo-King, it's all about the cows. It's all about saving nutrients and digestibilities and preserving it fast. And if we can save you another two to five percent dry matter loss, depending on your management, it's it's a no-brainer. It does a great job.

Mike (47:05)
Hey, that is well put guys. You did a wonderful, wonderful job. I appreciate both of you being here today. Chris, this might be another fifteen minutes while you tell us what you learned today, 'cause there's a there's a lot of knowledge being thrown around this room.

Chris Radke (47:20)
yeah, you guys are passionate. I love it. I know I know I've told Jason this before, but Mr. Spangler, you're Dr. Spangler, you're passionate as well, and I love it. I'm gonna just take what Dr. Spangler said is four step method of aerobic. So it's breathing, fermentation, the sugars to acid, storage phase, and then the final, the feed out. And also Jason does not like soggy salads. That's Cool,

Jason Alsum (47:42)
No. Neither do cows.

Mike (47:42)
Yeah.

Chris Radke (47:46)
cool. No, nobody does, I don't think. It's a good analogy though. I love it, love it.

if you like what we're talking about or you like have any suggestions of what you'd like to hear, please email us at podcast@agriking.com. Jason and Dr. Spenger, thank you so much for your time.

Jason Alsum (48:01)
Alrighty. Thank you guys.

Dave Spangler (48:02)
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Mike (48:02)
Thank you guys, appreciate it.

Jason Alsum (48:04)
Good to be with you. Thanks.