Maize silage harvesting is now underway in most regions.

Silage additives have long been promoted as a means of producing higher quality winter feed.

Most farmers are focused on extracting as much milk as possible from home-grown feed.

Ag machinery specialists Origin Agroup has recently been appointed exclusive importer and distributor of the Mammut range of forage handling equipment, following successful trials during the 2015 season.

Pioneer nutritionist, Dr Bill Mahanna, recently wrote his 52nd and final column for Feedstuffs, a pre-eminent USA feed and feed industry magazine.

The grass has never really fired this spring and as I travel around the country it appears many farmers will have little surplus for silage.

Since the introduction of Pioneer's New Zealand silage trial programme in 1991, silage yields have increased by an average of 310 kgDM/ha/year.

Most losses that occur when you make silage are invisible – as high as 40% of the original cut pasture, says DairyNZ.

Quality silage is a stable feed made from quality pasture preserved in the absence of oxygen by quality fermentation to minimise any loss of feeding value, says DairyNZ.

The latest Pioneer brand ‘Maize for Silage 2015-16’ catalogue gives average estimated growing costs for maize silage planted in high fertility or low fertility paddocks (Table 1).