The Effect of a Silage Inoculant on Silage Quality, Aerobic Stability, and Meat Production on Farm Scale

The effect of inoculation on nutrient content, fermentation, aerobic stability, and beef cattle performance for whole-plant corn silage treated with a commercial product (blend of homo- and heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria, BSM, blend of Enterococcus faecium, Lactobacillus plantarum, and Lactobacillus brevis, DSM numbers 3530, 19457, and 23231, resp.), was compared to a control treatment with no silage additives (CT). The material had a DM of 323 g/kg, crude protein, and water-soluble carbohydrate concentrations of 87.9 and 110.5 g/kg DM, respectively. BSM increased the fermentation rate with a significantly deeper pH (P < 0.01), a significant increase in the total organic acids concentration (P < 0.05), more lactic acid (P < 0.01), and numerically more acetic acid compared to CT. BSM significantly decreased the concentrations of butyric acid (P < 0.01), ethanol, and ammonia-N compared to the CT. BSM-treated silage decreased DM by 3.0 % (P < 0.01) and had a higher digestible energy and a higher metabolizable energy concentration by 2.3 (P < 0.01) and 1.00 % (P < 0.05), respectively, compared to untreated silage. Aerobic stability improved by more than 2 days in BSM silage. The DM intake of silage treated with BSM increased by 6.14 %, and improved weight gain and the feed conversion by 8.0 (P < 0.01) and 3.4%.