«Ukraine has a great potential in livestock production. I hope we can help to reach it. British-Ukrainian cooperation in the field of livestock production is getting stronger each year. We believe that sharing experience as well as personal contacts is important for a successful partnership», — said Katie Cottrell, Head of the Commercial Department of the British Embassy in Ukraine in her welcome speech.

Personal contact was established due to the participation of the British expert in silage making Dr. Dave Davies, who has a thirty-year experience in this field of agricultural production.

The expert told about the most important factors in silage making. As he pointed out, during the process of conservation the loss of silage dry matter can reach 25%. However, as practice shows, these losses are underestimated on the farms. Dr. Dave Davies focused on the height of maize cutting. Increase of the cutting height from 10 to 30 centimeters will increase the digestibility of NDF by 2.4%. In addition, the height of the stubble affects the spread of Clostridium. If maize is cut low — 2 centimeters — then each gram will contain 84 thousand of bacteria. If the height of the stubble is 10 centimeters, their number will be much smaller — 4 thousand per gram.

Other speakers at the workshop were Semen Kostin, manager of agricultural machinery JCB (Top class during green mass compacting); Ruslan Susol, scientific consultant of Frank Wright Ltd. (Importance of quality silage for efficient milk production) and Orina Basanets, manager of Agroinmash Ltd. (Milk arithmetic. Straw Chopper: expensive or beneficial?).

After presentations the participants of the workshop were invited to a master-class for the visual assessment of maize and alfalfa silage in the pits. Dr. Dave Davies demonstrated how to determine the quality of silage without laboratory tests.

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