Silage price in Pakistan: how it is priced, and what it actually costs you

Our current price band

This block is the only place on this page where a real price appears, and it is updated by hand rather than left to go stale.

Prices move. If the date above is more than a few weeks old, message us on WhatsApp at +92 310 4603311 and ask for today's rate rather than trusting the table.

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The five ways silage is priced in Pakistan

1. Per kilogram (Rs/kg)

The cleanest unit, and the one we recommend you convert everything into. It says nothing about quality on its own, but at least it removes the packaging from the comparison.

2. Per maund (Rs per 40 kg)

The unit most Pakistani livestock farmers think in. One maund is 40 kg, so per-maund prices are simply the per-kg price multiplied by 40. This is the standard commercial maund used across Pakistani agricultural trade today.

3. Per tonne (Rs per 1,000 kg)

Used for bulk pit and bunker silage, and for anything moving on a truck or in a container. One metric tonne is 1,000 kg, which is exactly 25 maunds.

4. Per bale

The most common unit for wrapped and bagged silage, and the most dangerous one, because a "bale price" is meaningless until you know the bale weight. Bales in the Pakistani market are commonly quoted anywhere from about 40 kg up to 70 kg or more. Our bales are 60-70 kg. Always ask for the weight, and ask whether it is a nominal weight or a weighbridge weight.

5. Per acre of standing crop

Some buyers, usually larger dairies with their own chopper and pit, buy the standing maize crop by the acre and do the harvesting themselves. This is the hardest basis to compare, because the price you pay per kilogram of feed depends entirely on the yield you actually get off the field, plus your own chopping, hauling, filling, compaction and sealing costs, plus your storage losses. Unless you have a weighbridge and a track record on that field, treat a per-acre price as an estimate, not a price.

You will also hear prices quoted per trolley — a tractor trolley load. Avoid it. Trolley capacities vary widely and there is no agreed weight, so a per-trolley price cannot be compared to anything.

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Conversion tables

Multipliers

That last row is the important one. Everything above it is bookkeeping. That row is where the money is.

Lookup table

This table is arithmetic only. The rows below span a deliberately wide range so you can find your quote in it. They do not indicate a market price band, and they are not our prices.

Bale weight changes the price by more than you think

Take any single bale price — say Rs 1,000, used here purely as round arithmetic:

The same Rs 1,000 bale price is 16.7% more expensive per kilogram if the bale is 60 kg rather than 70 kg. Nothing about the silage changed. Only the wrapping did.

One warning about the maund

The historic South Asian maund was 82.28 lb, about 37.32 kg. Pakistan long ago standardised on the 40 kg maund and that is what essentially all agricultural trade uses today, but if you are dealing with an informal seller in a rural market it costs nothing to confirm: "chalees kilo wala maund?" A 37 kg maund priced as a 40 kg maund is a 7% price increase hidden in a unit.

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What actually moves the silage price

Season. Silage is made when the maize comes off. Right at making, supply is at its peak and prices are usually at their softest. As stocks run down through the year, price firms. Pakistan has two well-documented green fodder scarcity periods — December to January, when winter fodders are dormant, and May to June, when winter fodders are finished and summer fodders have barely started (FAO). Silage prices tend to be strongest going into those windows, which is exactly when farmers who did not book ahead start ringing round. Our own making windows are your harvest/silage-making windows by season and region.

Dry matter content. The single biggest hidden variable. See the next section.

Crop year. This season's silage and silage made two seasons ago are not the same product, even if both are still fermented and sound. Ask for the making date, not just the year.

Distance and freight. Silage is 65-75% water by weight. When you buy delivered silage from far away, a meaningful share of the freight bill is water. Freight also tracks the diesel price, so a delivered quote from three months ago is not a delivered quote today. This is why ex-farm and delivered prices can look wildly different for the same product.

Order size. Loading a full truck costs the same in labour whether it goes out full or half full. Part loads carry a per-kilogram penalty. Our current break points are your order-size price break points, e.g. below X bales, X-Y bales, full truck.

Ex-farm versus delivered. Establish exactly what the price includes: loading at origin, freight, unloading at your farm, and who wears the cost if bales are punctured in transit. "Delivered" with the buyer unloading is a different price from "delivered and stacked".

Format and packaging. Pit and bunker silage carries no packaging cost but cannot be moved or bought in small lots. Wrapped bales carry the cost of multi-layer UV-resistant film, but they travel, they can be bought in truck lots rather than pit lots, and each bale is its own sealed silo — so opening one does not expose the rest. You are paying for a different product, not just a different wrapper.

The maize grain price. Silage maize and grain maize compete for the same standing crop. When grain maize firms, the opportunity cost of chopping for silage rises, and silage follows.

Substitute prices. Green fodder and wheat straw (toori) availability sets the ceiling on what silage can command in any given month.

Documentation. Silage sold with a current forage analysis, a fermentation profile and a mould screen costs more to produce than silage sold on a handshake. Whether that premium is worth paying is answered by the arithmetic below.

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The dry matter trap: why the cheapest bale is often the dearest feed

A cow does not eat kilograms. She eats dry matter. Water in a bale has a feeding value of zero, and you are paying for it by weight and hauling it by weight.

Well-made maize silage typically runs 25-35% dry matter, with 30-35% the harvest range Feedipedia recommends (Feedipedia). That spread of ten percentage points is enough to make a nonsense of any price comparison done on bale price alone.

Converting a price to a dry matter basis is one division. Nebraska Extension states the underlying rule plainly: nutrient content on a dry matter basis is the as-fed figure divided by the dry matter expressed as a decimal (UNL G2093). The same applies to price:

Price per kg of dry matter = price per kg as fed ÷ (dry matter % ÷ 100)

US extension services standardise corn silage pricing to a fixed dry matter — Michigan State uses 35% DM as the reference and applies a moisture adjustment factor to any lot that differs (MSU Extension). You should do the same thing informally with every quote you receive.

Worked example

These are illustrative numbers chosen so the arithmetic is easy to follow. They are not market prices and they are not our prices. Substitute the two quotes you actually have in front of you.

Two suppliers. Both quote 65 kg bales, both delivered to your farm gate.

Supplier B is 10% cheaper per bale and 15.2% more expensive per kilogram of dry matter.

Now scale it to a real purchase. Say you need one tonne of dry matter into the ration:

Buying from B, you pay Rs 7,308 more for the same feed, and you handle, haul, stack and unwrap about 875 kg more material to get it. If you are paying freight per tonne, add that too.

Layer energy on top. Feedipedia gives maize silage in the 25-35% DM band a metabolisable energy of 10.8 MJ per kg DM (Feedipedia):

Same conclusion, arrived at from a different direction.

Higher dry matter is not automatically better

Do not read the above as "buy the highest dry matter number you can find". Dry matter is a cost lever, not a quality score, and it cuts both ways:

• Below about 30% DM, the risk of poor fermentation, mould and bacterial spoilage rises, and nutrients are lost as effluent leaches out (Feedipedia).
• Above about 37% DM, the crop is harder to compact and more prone to heating once opened. Feedipedia notes that late-harvested material needs to be finely chopped specifically to prevent heating problems.
• A very high dry matter figure can mean a well-timed harvest, or it can mean the crop went past its window and dried out in the field — in which case starch digestibility and overall quality may be down even though the dry matter number looks good.

Feedipedia's harvest recommendation for maize forage is 30-35% DM. Separately, it ties the milk line sitting between one-third and two-thirds down the kernel, roughly 50-55 days after silking, to a dry matter of 32-38% (Feedipedia). Those are two different measurements that only roughly track each other, which is exactly why you should ask for both. We harvest at the milk-line stage; the fraction we cut at and the dry matter we measure are the milk line fraction you harvest at, e.g. 1/2 to 2/3, and your measured whole-plant DM % at chopping, and who measures it. Ask any supplier what stage they cut at, ask them to describe the milk line rather than just say "at the right time", and then ask for the measured dry matter — because that is the number the price turns on.

Check the dry matter yourself

You do not need a laboratory to sanity-check a dry matter claim. The standard microwave method:

1. Weigh out about 100 g of a well-mixed silage sample. Write the exact weight down.
2. Spread it thinly on a plate. Put a cup of water in the microwave alongside it, so the oven has something to absorb energy if the sample dries out.
3. Heat for two minutes. Re-weigh. Stir.
4. Heat in 30-second bursts, re-weighing each time, until the weight stops falling by more than about a gram. Stop immediately if it starts to char — a charred sample reads low and is unusable.
5. Dry matter % = (final dry weight ÷ starting fresh weight) × 100.

Sample from the middle of a bale, not the surface. Do it on two or three bales from different parts of the load. If your figure is more than a few points away from what the supplier told you, that is a conversation worth having before you pay.

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How silage compares on cost per unit of energy

To compare silage against the other feeds on your farm, you need the energy each one delivers per unit of weight as fed — because that is how you buy it. The table below uses published general reference values, not our own analyses, and not Pakistan-specific measurements. Your actual figures will vary with the crop, the season and the supplier.

Sources: maize silage, maize green forage, wheat straw, wheat bran, maize grain, all Feedipedia (FAO/INRAE/CIRAD/AFZ). Feedipedia reports maize silage ME by dry matter band — 10.5 MJ/kg DM below 25% DM, 10.8 from 25% to 35%, and 11.0 from 35% to 40% — so the 10.8 used above is the figure that belongs to the 25-35% window, not an average across bands.

To get your own cost per MJ: divide the price per maund you have been quoted by the MJ per maund in the table.

Rs per MJ = Rs per maund ÷ MJ per maund

Three things this table tells you, and one trap it sets.

Silage against green fodder. At 32% DM, a maund of maize silage carries roughly 50% more energy than a maund of fresh green maize chop, mainly because it carries less water and because it includes the grain. Green fodder also has to be cut and fed the same day, and it is unavailable in exactly the months when you need it most. Silage is the same crop with the water partly removed, the grain included, and a twelve-month shelf life. Compare the two per maund of energy, not per maund of weight.

Silage against wheat straw. Per MJ, straw usually looks cheap. Per animal, it is not a substitute. Wheat straw runs about 4.2% crude protein, 77.5% NDF and 7.2% lignin, with organic matter digestibility around 48% (Feedipedia). A lactating buffalo physically cannot eat enough of it to meet her requirement, because intake is capped by fibre. Straw is a gut-fill and a ration diluter. It is priced accordingly and should be budgeted accordingly.

Silage against concentrate. Maize grain and wheat bran carry far more energy per maund, and on a straight Rs-per-MJ basis concentrate frequently wins. But you cannot feed a ration of concentrate. Rumen function needs physically effective fibre, and pushing starch too hard invites acidosis. The practical question is not "which is cheapest per MJ" but "what is the cheapest way to fill the forage half of the ration", and that is where silage competes.

The trap: cost per MJ is one input into a feed decision, not the decision. It ignores protein, it ignores dry matter intake, it ignores rumen health, it ignores wastage, and it ignores the labour and land cost of growing green fodder yourself. Use it to shortlist, then look at the whole ration.

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Questions to ask any silage supplier before you pay

Copy this list. Ask it of us and ask it of everyone else you are quoting.

On the product

1. What is the dry matter percentage, and can I see the lab report? Which laboratory, what date, and which lot does it cover?
2. What is the pH? Well-fermented maize silage should sit around 3.7 to 4.0 (Penn State Extension).
3. What is the fermentation profile — lactic acid, acetic acid, butyric acid? Penn State's targets are roughly 3-6% lactic acid of DM, 1-3% acetic acid, and a lactic-to-acetic ratio near 2.5:1 to 3:1. Detectable butyric acid is a red flag for a bad fermentation.
4. Has it been screened for mould and mycotoxins? Penn State flags mould counts above 1,000 CFU/g as a problem.
5. What is the starch content, and what growth stage was it cut at?
6. What is the chop length, and were the kernels processed?
7. When was it made? Which month, which season, which crop year?

On the deal 8. Is the price ex-farm or delivered? Delivered to my gate, or to the nearest main road? 9. Who unloads, and is that in the price? 10. What is the exact bale weight, is it a weighbridge weight, and what is the tolerance either side? 11. How many layers of wrap, and what film? What happens if bales arrive punctured? 12. What is the minimum order, and where are the price breaks? 13. What are the payment terms, and what is the lead time? 14. Can I open and sample a bale before I commit to the load? 15. What is your replacement policy for spoiled or mouldy bales?

Any supplier who cannot answer 1, 7, 10 and 15 is asking you to buy on trust alone. That may still be the right call, but you should know that is what you are doing, and the price should reflect it.

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What to check when the truck arrives

• Weigh a sample. Pick three or four bales at random and put them over a public weighbridge (kanta). Nominal weights and actual weights are not always the same thing.
• Open one. Silage should smell sweet and slightly acidic. Sharp vinegar, alcohol, or the rancid-butter smell of butyric fermentation all mean something went wrong. So does a tobacco or caramel smell, which points to overheating.
• Look at the colour. Well-preserved maize silage is generally a yellow-green to olive colour. Dark brown or black patches are spoilage.
• Feel the temperature. A bale that is warm inside is fermenting or heating when it should be stable.
• Check the film. Count the layers if you can. Look for punctures, especially around the edges and where bales have been stacked. A punctured bale is a spoiled bale within days.
• Run your own dry matter test on one or two bales using the microwave method above.

Note the results in writing before you release payment. It is a much easier conversation to have on the day than a week later.

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Where official price data does and does not help

Punjab publishes daily wholesale rates through the Agriculture Marketing Information System, run by the Agriculture Department's marketing wing with PITB, covering market committee notified rates for agricultural commodities across the province (amis.pk, PITB). It is a useful reference for grain maize, wheat and vegetables, and it is worth checking if you want to understand which way input costs are moving.

It will not give you a silage price. Silage is not a mandi-notified commodity — it is a processed, contracted product sold farm-to-farm and farm-to-dairy, not traded through market committees. Anyone quoting you an "official silage rate" is quoting you something that does not exist. What exists is a spread of individual supplier prices, varying by dry matter, distance, season and volume, which is why the arithmetic on this page matters more than any published number would.

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Get a current quote

We breed our own hybrid maize genetics, grow the crop on our own farms in Punjab, harvest at milk-line stage, and chop and bale into 60-70 kg bales wrapped in multi-layer UV-resistant film. Because we control the crop from seed to wrap, we can tell you what stage it was cut at and where it came from, rather than passing on someone else's guess.

Send us a WhatsApp message with:

• Your district, so we can quote you delivered rather than guessing at freight
• Your herd size and type (buffalo, crossbred, or mixed) and how many animals you intend to feed
• The quantity you need, in bales, maunds or tonnes — whichever unit you think in
• When you need it

We will come back with a current price on both an ex-farm and a delivered basis, the bale count that matches your requirement, and whatever forage analysis is available for the lot in question — confirm what analysis you can supply with a quote, and whether it is lot-specific.

WhatsApp: +92 310 4603311 Email: [email protected]

Head office: 52 A3 Johar Town, Lahore. Highlight Research Farm: Bahawalnagar Road, Arifwala 57450.

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Sources

• Feedipedia, Maize silage — dry matter ranges, harvest recommendation, milk line and days after silking, ME by DM band, fermentation risk at low and high DM
• Feedipedia, Maize green forage — fresh maize DM, protein and ME
• Feedipedia, Wheat straw — DM, CP, NDF, lignin, ME, OM digestibility
• Feedipedia, Wheat bran — DM, CP, ME
• Feedipedia, Maize grain — DM, starch, ME
• Michigan State University Extension, Pricing corn silage — standardising silage price to a reference dry matter and applying a moisture adjustment factor
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln Extension, Feed Dry Matter Conversions (G2093) — as-fed to dry matter conversion method
• Penn State Extension, What's in your new crop corn silage — target pH, lactic and acetic acid, mould counts
• FAO, Fodder Oats: a world overview — Pakistan — Pakistan's two annual fodder deficit periods
• Agriculture Marketing Information System, Punjab and PITB AMIS — official Punjab market rate reporting

Feedipedia values are general international reference figures published by FAO, INRAE, CIRAD and AFZ. They describe typical feeds, not any specific consignment, and are used here to illustrate method rather than to state the composition of any product.