Assessment of corn silage in dairy farms in the municipality of Patos de Minas, Brazil

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the corn silage used in 31 dairy farms in the
municipality of Patos de Minas, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. A
questionnaire was applied with questions related to the property, the silage
process, and the use of roughage. A cluster analysis was then performed to
group the properties using the centroid method. Data were submitted to
analysis of variance in a completely randomized design. The continuous
variables and the discrete variables had their means compared using the
Tukey test and the chi-square test, respectively, with 5% probability of type
I error. Properties with low milk production were those with no technical
assistance; they tended to have nonuniform silo faces and manual removal
of silage, resulting in higher silage loss.