Exploring Norway's Agricultural Innovations: From Silage Management to High Oxygen Barrier Films

Exploring Norway's Agricultural Innovations: From Silage Management to High Oxygen Barrier Films
On a recent visit to Norway to carry out some Customer training one of our Team experienced some really interesting conditions!

On the West coast the sun shone and they were able to visit some really good farms to see how the silage is made and stored. Good clamp management was evident and some great silages have been made, a slight tweak for the future is to use a High Oxygen Barrier film to retain that DM in the top layer and reduce even more the amount of waste. Most farms in the area are on a robotic milking system, typically with 1 or sometimes 2 per farm. Silage is often made in field piles with less than half of the farms having bunkers or any sort of walls. The challenge here is the compaction on the sides especially when they are pretty steep so not too easy to roll well with the tractor.


The second leg of the trip was to Oslo and then North into the somewhat wilder side. The 70cm of snow that dropped the day before made the drive rather interesting and also made it near impossible to view the bunkers as they were covered in such a thick blanket of snow. Again nearly all the farms milk with a robot and herd size is smaller with 30-40 cows per farm.

Milk prices are low in Norway so there is a real focus on input costs and great appetite to learn how they can preserve their valuable home grown forage by switching to a HOB film.

Related Posts

6 Simple Steps to Prep Your Silage Clamp for the New Season
6 Simple Steps to Prep Your Silage Clamp for the New Season
Preparing a silage clamp for the new season can be daunting. A farmer's to-do list can be as long as your arm. Silost...
Read More
Clamp Management priorities play key role in lifting milk from forage
Clamp Management priorities play key role in lifting milk from forage
  * Reducing silage losses to just 5% delivers real productivity gains * 3500 litres/cow from forage now an attainab...
Read More
Silage Clamp Management
Silage Clamp Management
Silostop Agri can help advise on ensiling and feeding forage from clamps. We have worldwide experience using oxygen b...
Read More