Microbiology of Ensiling

In many parts of the world, conserved forage is an essential component of ruminant diets during those intervals when fresh crops are unavailable. A. J. G. Barnett subdivided the process of ensiling into four principal phases of different length and intensity, which cannot be separated precisely from each other. When silage is used as a feed source on a farm, several events take place that have relevance to the number of clostridial spores in silage and milk. During mowing and harvesting of a silage crop, contamination of the crop by soil particles, which contain clostridial spores, is unavoidable. The microbial population of standing or freshly harvested forage crops is considerably different from that found during the process of silage fermentation or in the final product. Most inoculants consist exclusively of homofermentative or facultatively heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria because these are the most efficient producers of lactic acid.