Reduce the risk of poor quality preservation and know the right time for ensiling with our pre-ensilability testing.

Our pre-ensilability testing will enable you to manage the nitrogen content of your grass to reduce the risk of poor quality preservation and will give you scientific advice on crop suitability for ensiling.

When ensiling silage the aim is to get the bacteria in the silage to convert the sugars available as quickly as possible to lactic acid to drop the pH of the silage to around 4, this is where the silage is stable. The higher the sugar content the more food for the bacteria the quicker the pH drops. The target sugar content to ensure good fermentation is 3% or higher.

High Nitrate levels in grass are bad as they increase the buffering capacity making it more difficult to get the pH level down. As grass grows it uses 2 units of Nitrogen per day, so if you applied 100 units per acre, it will take on average 50 days for this fertiliser to be used up.

If your nitrate test reading is high, the most likely cause is that not enough time has elapsed from the spreading date.