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.
