"Conservation of forage and by-products for animals."

A brief overview of the achievements reached by the research group I founded at the Volcani Center in Israel, may serve as a guide-line to the improvement of animal nutrition that can be achieved elsewhere through in-depth examination of the potential for locally produced fodder and utilization of by-products.

In 1979, I was invited to establish a research laboratory at the Volcani Center, Bet Dagan. This laboratory was set up to deal with forage preservation and recycling of agricultural and industrial by-products.
The objective was to increase the use of local materials and to improve preservation under Israeli climatic conditions.
The direct outcome of the activities of this unit is that silage usage has increased from the previous 15% of the total intake for dairy cows to 35% today. This has resulted in marked reduction of the imports of feed concentrates.
This unit is unique in that it deals with silage and hay production under subtropical conditions, and is therefore important to farmers in other countries that have similar climatic conditions.

R and D Subjects in which we have developed a high level of expertise that could be beneficial to others include:
• Reduction in aerobic losses and maintenance of stability of wheat, corn, and sorghum silage;
• Preservation and use of by-products where in our case studies on orange peel, vegetable surpluses, industrial by products, and chicken manure served as models.
• Development of practical laboratory methods to evaluate forage quality and stability.

Further information on these topics is available in a manual of forage and forage preservation and from my list of recent publications.

Gilad Ashbell