15 September 2015, 08:00
At the Agritechnica 2015, CLAAS introduced a new addition to its range of cracker rollers in the form of the new MCC MAX for conditioning maize silage and this new product has been awarded silver DLG innovation medal.
Equipment users, researchers and the agricultural machinery industry are constantly looking for new ways to further improve kernel shredding, digestibility, compressibility in the silo and the ensiling properties of maize silage. This is based on the desire to increase the energy availability of the crop. Forage quality is the most important success factor, especially for dairy producers who are currently under intense production and cost pressure, but also for the operators of biogas plants.
The MCC MAX is a new conditioning system which fulfils these requirements. The MCC MAX rollers have been developed for conditioning maize silage with chop lengths of between 7.0 and 22 mm, which is the most popular application range. They have a sawtooth profile and each feature 30 annular segments. The positioning and special geometry of the annular segments mean that the chopped crop is not only processed by friction, but also by cutting and shearing forces. This allows even more intensive conditioning of the grain kernels as well as shredding of the stalk material. Compared with conventional corn crackers, the MCC MAX is suitable for a much larger range of chop lengths and dry matter percentages while still achieving excellent conditioning results. "The more intensive kernel shredding increases the digestible starch quantity of the maize silage. This allows more milk to be produced from maize silage and the amount of supplementary feed can be reduced", explains Alexander Kirchbeck of Product Management at CLAAS Selbstfahrende Erntemaschinen GmbH.
The greater shredding of the crops also means that the MCC MAX concept achieves the desired proportion of large crop surface areas over a wide range of chop lengths. This offers many advantages: Farmers who supply dairy operations and biogas plants with forage from one and the same silo can use this method to produce silage which has the optimal structure for both use cases. Farmers who want to feed longer-cut silage to their animals can produce a shredded forage structure with excellent kernel shredding using the MCC MAX. At the same time, the MCC MAX offers farm contractors and machinery collectives a new technical solution, which allows them to optimally fulfil a very wide range of customer requirements for forage conditioning without having to adjust the equipment of their machines.
You find CLAAS at Agritechnica 2015 in hall 13, booth No C05.
Source: CLAAS