I have made about a dozen trips to Japan over the last decade to work with dairies on the north island of Hokkaido. While the Japanese are internationally known for “Kaizen,” referring to a focus on continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering and business management, it is impressive how quickly they adapt ideas from around the world into their dairy sector.

Fermentrics is a nutritional diagnostic report unique in that it contains data generated from a novel, gas-fermentation method popular among European academic researchers. There are only a few university and corporate product development research labs in North America with gas-fermentation systems and they are not capable of processing and handling the sample volume needed in a commercial offering.

Dairy producers and their nutritionists are constantly looking for ways to improve forage yield and nutritional quality. This includes areas such as: Hybrid or variety selection Use of crop consultants to help manage agronomic issues Harvesting at optimal crop maturity Wide-swathing alfalfa or high-chopping corn silage Ensuring proper chop length (and kernel processing in corn silage), proper moisture, silage compaction and use of oxygen-barrier film and plastic to protect against surface spoilage Silage inoculation Proper face management to reduce nutrient loss and improve palatability Increased understanding of how length of time in fermented storage changes feed digestibility