Advanced Preservative Systems: Offering the Perfect Forage Solutions.

 By Maura Keller.

 With more than 30 years of serving the agriculture and cattle industry as a dairy nutritionist, Dan Armstrong, owner of Advanced Preservative Systems, understands the importance of keeping forage fresh. Not only does fresh forage ensure agricultural producers’ bottom lines are not impacted by unusable forage, but providing the means to ensure fresh forage means that the animals consuming forage are being fed the freshest, healthiest forage available.

“During the time that I worked as a nutritionist in the industry, I discovered a niche that I really liked – preservatives. I evaluated many products in the marketplace. I like how they worked and performed and I learned about the competition. Eventually I worked for a preservative company before deciding to start my own company about five years ago,” Armstrong says.  

Armstrong’s vision for Advanced Preservative Systems is to become a leading player in the marketplace by bringing exceptional preservation products to producers and help save the nutritional components within dry matter.

“I want to provide solid products to dairy producers and others in the silage industry with products that bring them a lot more value and a lot more benefits to both their production and their livestock,” Armstrong says.

Key Product Offerings
Advanced Preservative Systems currently offers three key products, all of which eliminate oxygen and spoilage from dry matter. The company’s Preserve One product works on contact and is designed to promote healthy fermentation of hay and silage. Using key science methodology, Preserve One provides fast fermentation, prevents mold and yeast from growing, preserves essential nutrients, all while eliminating oxygen within material.  

“We focus on harvesting the highest quality forages, and Preserve One enables us to do just that. It keeps our forage cool and avoids the excessive heating that’s common after harvest,” says Tim V., a producer in Coopersville, Michigan.

“Preserve One is more of a silage product,” Armstrong says. “It focuses on anything where moisture is 45 to 50% or greater. We eliminate oxygen in the mass, therefore reducing the gram negative bacteria, allowing the naturally occurring bacteria to basically come out of dormancy and begin the process of fermentation, starting and finishing faster.”

Another favorite among Advanced Preservative Systems’ product lineup is the Evergreen product. When this synthetic blend of sulfur compounds comes in contact with moisture in the hay bale, the compounds are activated to tie up oxygen impeding the growth of yeast and mold. Proven safe for animals, EverGreen reduces oxygen in the bale, preventing heat and caramelizing. In fact, producers using EverGreen can bale at, or below 25% moisture and actually bale hay earlier, resulting in leafier and more nutritious feed.

The company’s third core product, Feed Fresh, is a two-fold product and, as Armstrong explains, is ideal for producers that don’t use any preservatives in their forages. Using a blend of sulfur compounds and enzymes that are safe for all livestock, FeedFresh helps reduce oxidation, mold, and heating. This in return allows for an increase in feed stability and an improvement in palatability. It also reduces the effects of feed refusal, delivering a more stable nutrient retentive feed.

“This product helps keep more of a shelf life for feeding mills and for feeding phases with dairy cows,” Armstrong says.

All three products provide higher feed quality. “Producers make money by feeding forage and lose money by dry matter loss,” Armstrong says. “We are going to save more of the dry matter tonnage so they can get more out of their crop feed. The cattle also eat forage that has more energy density and less negative bacteria. Overall, we help producers preserve and prevent as much loss as possible, while providing solid nutrition to the livestock.”

So, who are these preservative products most applicable for? When, quite simply, any producers who are dealing with moisture in their silage. But those east of the Mississippi River tend to deal with a lot more moisture and gram negative bacteria is a bit more prevalent because they have that much more moisture.

“Those west of the Mississippi and in the Plains states may have more ground moisture due to irrigation but also have drier air, which is more beneficial,” Armstrong. “It is simply a different usage rate from one side of the river to the other.”

Looking ahead, Armstrong is planning on continuing his efforts of working with labs, doing more trials and more in-depth testing to further enhance and expand Advanced Preservative Systems’ product offerings.

“We are working with more on-farm trials with producers to show them the benefits of these products,” Armstrong says. “It’s fun watching people find new ways to enhance their foraging solutions.”