At the Machine of the Year 2017 awards ceremony held at SIMA recently, CLAAS won the Special Jury Prize for the JAGUAR fitted with SHREDLAGE crop processing technology.


CLAAS Machine of the Year 2017

A large audience watched the prize-giving held on the stand of the French agricultural magazine "Terre-net".

The crop processing technology known under the brand name SHREDLAGE originates in the USA and is a pioneering form of maize silage treatment used by an increasing number of dairy farmers in regions with not much grassland. Typically maize is chopped at a longer chop length of 26 to 30 millimetres and processing the crop using the SHREDLAGE cracker technology is key to the entire process.

The intensive conditioning of the material increases the surface area of the chopped product many times over in a way that is designed to significantly improve bacterial fermentation after ensiling and above all during digestion in the cow's rumen. The aim of this process is to substantially increase the structural effects of maize silage in the rumen while simultaneously adding to the availability of the starch contained in all plant parts, which could lead to an increase in milk yields.In addition, the rumen-friendly silage structure is believed to improve the health of the herd.

SHREDLAGE offers dairy farmers other benefits as well, besides greater milk yield and improved animal health. Its optimum starch conditioning allows for a reduction in the use of concentrated feed while still improving the milk yield. The need to supplement with highly structured fodder such as straw can be reduced or even eliminated altogether, producing even more savings. The SHREDLAGE rollers are manufactured by CLAAS Industrietechnik in Paderborn, Germany.

This was the second year that the "Machine of the Year" awards have been presented at SIMA in a ceremony organised by the French magazine "Terre-Net" in cooperation with the German agricultural publisher DLV. The awards honour the world's best innovations in agricultural technology. A jury of journalists from several European countries specialising in agricultural machinery select winners in the competition's 17 categories. This year some 70 applications were received for consideration by the jury.