When a forage sample arrives in a laboratory, if it is a wet feed such as silage

Question

When a forage sample arrives in a laboratory, if it is a wet feed such as silage, haylage, or fresh plant material (pasture sample, crop sample), it is often dried at about 55° C to about 80-95% DM content. Subsequent analyses are made on this partially dry sample. The reason for this is that drying at higher temperature can create Maillard product and change the fiber content of subsequent fiber samples. The partially dried sample is used to determine a "crude DM", and the actual DM of the crudely dried sample is determined after grinding the sample for analysis and drying a portion of the sample at 100 °C over night.

Given the following:

Alfalfa haylage sample weight as it arrived in the laboratory before drying: 158 g.

Empty pan weight: 27.7 g.

Crudely dried sample and pan: 114.2 g.

Find the crude dry matter percentage to the nearest tenth percent.

Explanation / Answer

Total weight = 158g

Crudely dried sample = 114.2-27.7 = 86.5g

Total dry matter percentage = Total dry matter / total weight of sample

=86.5/158 = 54.75%

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