Sciantec invests in new NIR instrumentation for forage analysis

Sciantec has invested in new NIR instrumentation for its quality forage analysis services to improve the accuracy, reproducibility, and robustness of results for customers.

Sciantec’s new equipment has an updated configured sample interface and a wider wavelength range, enabling scanning of a greater area and better reproducibility over non-homogenous samples including forage. Options include nutritional analysis by NIR for fresh grass, silage, haylage, and whole crop, dietary minerals analysis for macro minerals, micro minerals, and antagonists, and VFA and lactic acid analysis by wet chemistry.

‘This investment in our instrumentation is part of our commitment to continuous improvement for our customers,’ said Mike Whitfield, Business Development Manager at Sciantec. ‘This season, customers can get even more accurate, robust, and reliable results that are produced using our brand new, state-of-the-art instrumentation. Many of our results are also extremely quick — results for nutritional analysis will be available on the day of receipt, whilst hay, haylage, and whole crop analysis takes only 48 hours. This is very important for our customers, who often require rapid turnaround of results to help them diagnose problems on-farm, such as a reduction in milk output, so they can adjust rations accordingly to increase productivity.’

Most livestock farmers have forage available for summer grazing or winter silage. This low-cost supply of animal feed is an easy source of supplementary nutrition — if it is of high quality. Forage analysis helps customers determine the nutritional quality of forage to allow herd nutrition, crop nutrition, and fertiliser programmes to be tailored for improved animal welfare, productivity, and profitability.

‘The team has worked incredibly hard to install this new equipment and improve the business’ forage analysis services,’ said Simon Parrington, Group Chief Executive Officer of Cawood. ‘At Cawood, we are dedicated to supporting our customers with accurate and robust services to help them meet their goals whilst supporting a safer, healthier planet. By installing this new instrumentation, Sciantec has continued to cement itself as one of the UK’s largest providers of specialist forage and animal feed analysis.’

Sciantec’s forage analysis options include:

• Nutritional analysis by NIR for fresh grass, grass silage, maize silage, hay/haylage, whole crop, and lucerne silage
• Dietary minerals analysis for macro minerals, micro minerals, and antagonists
• VFA and lactic acid analysis by wet chemistry.

For more information or to order your prepaid envelopes, sample bags, and submission forms, which are available for free as part of the package, contact us today.