Why choose Ecosyl 100 for this year’s silage?

16 April 2025

With potentially £35,000-£40,000 worth of silage in a 1,000 tonne clamp, isn’t it worth giving it the best protection you can?

Without an additive, the quality of a silage’s fermentation – and therefore how well its nutrients and dry matter are preserved – are left much more open to chance.

Fermentation is essentially a ‘pickling’ process which protects silage against the growth of unwanted microbes. 

The problem is, if you ensile grass without an additive, you are dependent on whatever bacteria are naturally present on the grass to carry out the fermentation. These might include some good bacteria. But there are also very likely to be bad ones too – in particular those that come from slurry or soil.

So while the good bacteria might ferment the sugar in the grass to lactic acid (which is the process you want – see later), the unwanted bacteria produce compounds that are much less desirable – such as ethanol and butyric acid. 

Wasted energy

Some of these compounds are not only less effective at ‘pickling’ the grass – which allows other undesirable bacteria to continue feeding on the silage for longer; using up nutrients – they also waste some of the energy and DM contained in the sugar that they ferment. For example, certain bacteria can waste 17% of the energy in the fermented sugar and 41% of its DM. Also, carbon dioxide is produced in this process, which is a greenhouse gas.

A particularly unwelcome fermentation occurs when clostridia bacteria from soil are present. These convert lactic acid into unwanted butyric acid. This process not only wastes nearly a fifth of the energy and over half the DM, it also produces silage that is unpalatable.

Ecosyl fermentation

By contrast, when Ecosyl is applied, it delivers a massive 1 million highly beneficial Lactobacillus plantarum MTD/1 bacteria per gram of grass treated.

This special bacterial MTD/1 strain has been selected because it is highly efficient at fermentation, resulting in rapid production of lactic acid. This, in turn, produces a rapid ‘pickling’ effect, so the growth of undesirable bacteria, which would otherwise ‘feed’ on the silage, is quickly stopped.

What’s more, there’s another advantage of this type of fermentation. 

Because only lactic acid is produced from the fermented sugar, there is no DM loss involved during this conversion and very little energy loss; the lactic acid is only about 0.7% lower in energy than the original sugar.

Extensively researched

Better still, when you choose Ecosyl, you know it comes backed up with extensive research.

For example, while grass ensiled without an additive lost a tenth of its DM, in grass silage made with Ecosyl, DM losses were more than halved.

If 1,000 tonnes of fresh grass had been ensiled at 30% DM – i.e. 300 tonnes of DM ensiled – this reduction in DM loss would equate to having 16.5 tonnes more silage DM available to feed compared with the untreated silage. 

But the other benefit from treating with Ecosyl is improved silage quality. 

With fewer nutrients consumed by undesirable microbes in Ecosyl-treated silage, more nutrients remain available for the cow. Indeed, Ecosyl-treated silage has been shown to be higher in true protein and higher in metabolisable energy (ME) – for example containing 11.3 MJ/kgDM compared with 10.6 MJ/kgDM in untreated silage. This means more energy available for production of milk (or indeed meat).

More milk from forage

Consistent with this result, research on a range of forages showed that cows fed silage preserved with Ecosyl yielded 1.2 litres more milk/cow/day on average compared with cows fed untreated silage. In other words, more milk from forage.

Overall, compared with the value of silage, the cost of preserving it with Ecosyl is minimal.