Effects of moisture and additives on feed quality of alfalfa silage

Two factors (moisture×additive) and eight levels design were used to investigate the effects of moisture and additives on quality of alfalfa silage.Three additives were used in the present study,which was lactic acid bacteria+glucose,cellulose enzyme,and beneficial bacteria(suk B).The alfalfa containing 54.27% and 42.67% of water were supplemented with or without one of the three additives and were then ensiled in polythelene bags for 65 days,respectively.Each treatment repeated three times.The results showed that evaluation scores of each treatment were between 13.6 and 16.1 which suggested that all of them were good silage.Silage with enzyme cellulose group had the highest sensory score with 16.1.Moisture and additives,separately,has no effect on nutritional ingredients of alfalfa silage,however,the interaction of these two factors significantly improved the smell scores (P0.05).The alfalfa containing 54.27% moisture had significantly low level of pH which improved silage quality.All of these results suggested that low moisture alfalfa can directly be made to silage without any additives,however,it was unfavourable for silage acidity reduction if the moisture was too low.Only under the appropriate moisture conditions,additives can improve alfalfa silage fermentation quality.