The Corn You Grew Is Leaving in the Manure. Here's How to Turn More Starch into Milk Solids.
Every season you wait is another harvest of starch in the manure. Learn to read it before you cut.
No hybrid to sell you. No inoculant to push.
The loss you can see
You've seen the undigested kernels in the manure. That's the milk you paid to grow.
A whole, unbroken corn kernel sits in the rumen and does nothing — bacteria can't get in, enzymes can't get in. It floats, it passes, and it feeds the next thing downstream. You paid to grow that starch, harvest it, pack it, and sheet it — and the cow handed it back.
Whole kernels in the manure — starch you paid to grow.
Starch that walks out the back
The yellow flecks that should have been milk aren't a freak result — they're a loss you can read, and learn to close.
Fiber that quietly caps intake
Your cow eats roughly 7 kg of forage fiber a day and digests less than half. The rest fills her rumen and caps how much more she could have milked.
A win you never see
When digestibility improves, cows often eat less and milk the same — a real efficiency gain you'll miss unless you track intake. So the win gets written off as "didn't work."
You can't fix what you can't read. This masterclass teaches you to read it.
Every rep has the best hybrid
Most of it is noise. Sorting the two is the hard part.
Some of what you're told is true. A lot of it isn't. Here's what the data actually says.
It's a catastrophe for silage at the extremes, and brilliant for grain. It depends entirely on your goal — and the course shows you how to tell which side you're on.
A hundred years of breeding hasn't moved fiber digestibility one point — it was never bred for. Same climate, 1920 genetics versus today: zero difference.
Dr. Ferraretto ran a deliberately bad silage study to kill this myth. It fermented beautifully and digested like garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.
Dr. Ferraretto has no hybrid, no inoculant, and no additive to sell you. That's exactly why what he teaches is worth more than anything on a sales sheet.
What actually unlocks the starch
The silo is working for you. But it has limits.
For years the industry assumed acids did the work. Then the data came in.
Vitreous endosperm (left) locks starch away; floury (right) gives it up.
Cut too late, chop too coarse, or pick a vitreous kernel, and eight months of fermentation won't save you. Ferraretto has the eight-month trials to prove it — the gap you start with is the gap you keep. Applied correctly, that single principle is worth more than the price of this course every harvest.
What you'll be able to do
Read a forage report and a feed bunk the way Ferraretto does.
Spot the milk you're leaving behind
One point of fiber digestibility is worth ~200 g more intake and ~250 g more fat-corrected milk per cow per day. One kg of digestible fiber can become up to 3 kg of milk.
Judge fiber on the numbers that matter
NDF, uNDF, and NDF digestibility — and know which lab method you're actually looking at.
Trace starch loss from silo to manure
Kernel processing score to fecal starch — and know which lever to pull: maturity, processing, fermentation time, or endosperm type.
Call the harvest window
Read dry matter and milk line together — and dodge the stay-green trap that fools both.
See through the marketing
Know when BMR, shredding, longer fermentation, or an inoculant genuinely pays — and when it quietly costs you yield or money.
Apply NASEM 2021 correctly
What really changed for carbohydrates, and why starch finally sits in the energy equations.
Remember the manure up top? This is what reading your silage does.
Money in the manure.
Money in the tank.
That's a percentage point of digestibility — about 200 g more milk per cow, every day.
What's inside
16 hours with Dr. Ferraretto. Two modules.
Built from working trial data, not textbook summaries.
From the chopper to the silo face — where the numbers are decided
Fiber & Starch Digestibility for Milk Solids
- Fiber quality indicators (NDF, uNDF, NDFD) — and the levers that actually move them
- Particle size, feeding behavior, and rumen health → milk solids
- Evaluating starch digestibility: from kernel processing score to fecal starch
- Unlocking starch in corn silage, high-moisture corn, and rehydrated grain — endosperm, vitreousness, prolamin, maturity, processing, and fermentation
NASEM 2021, Silage 101, Inoculants, Fungi & Yeasts
- Silage 101: better fermentation, compaction, sealing, silo-face management, and less shrink
- Fungi and yeasts: how they erode value, and how to monitor silage hygiene
- Strategic use of inoculants: how microbial and chemical types actually work — and where they pay
- NASEM 2021 carbohydrate and energy updates for high-producing diets
Your 100 credits
The course teaches you to read your silage. Your credits let you do it — on your own herd, tonight.
Most courses end at the last video. This one walks out to the bunk with you. Every student gets 100 Ruminants.AI credits — the AI nutrition platform used in 136 countries — so the moment a concept clicks, you can run it against your lab report, your diet file, your prices.
Enrollment bonus
+100 credits on the AI built for ruminant specialists — optimize your diets now.
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A drop in corn silage dry matter from 34% to 31% needs an immediate TMR adjustment to keep nutrient delivery consistent and avoid diluting energy, protein and fiber. The as-fed amount has to change — otherwise cows get fewer actual nutrients per kg of feed.
Key recommendations
- Increase as-fed corn silage. To still deliver the same DM, feed more as-fed.
20 kg × 0.34 = 6.8 kg DM
6.8 kg DM ÷ 0.31 = 21.9 kg as-fed - Recalculate every ingredient. Silage is a major component, so its DM shift moves the whole ration — readjust the rest to hold the original ratios. (Dr. Bill Weiss, Module 1·L1; McBeth et al., 2013)
- Watch forage:concentrate & NDF. Skip the correction and the forage:concentrate ratio drops while NDF dilutes — quietly pushing starch and energy density up. (McBeth et al., 2013)
- Avoid ration dilution. Unadjusted DM means lower real nutrient intake, less milk, and more digestive-upset risk. (Dr. Bill Weiss, M1·L1; Chen et al., 2025)
As-fed to hold 6.8 kg DM
| Corn silage DM | As-fed (kg) |
|---|---|
| 34% | 20.0 |
| 31% | 21.9 |
A ±1–2 unit swing can be sampling noise, but a 3-unit drop (34→31%) is real — sample twice, then update your ration software and tell the feeders. (Dr. Bill Weiss, M1·L1)
Ask anything from the course
Paste your own numbers and get a grounded, study-cited answer in seconds — on web or WhatsApp, in any of 45 languages.
From your diet to the operator's sheet
Drop in the ration you already use and Ruminants.AI returns a print-ready TMR loading sheet — batched, sequenced, ready for the mixer.
Santafe — ES · ddg diet
100 head · 1×/day · 2 batches/day · target 2,729 kg/batch
| # | Ingredient | kg | Running |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corn silage, typical50% of corn silage — Pass 1 | 947 | 947 |
| 2 | Legume hay, mid-maturityPre-process to <30 mm if needed | 117 | 1,064 |
| 3 | Corn grain dry, fine grind | 178 | 1,241 |
| 4 | Soybean meal, solvent 48CP | 115 | 1,357 |
| 5 | Cottonseed, whole | 113 | 1,469 |
| 6 | DDGS, low fat | 172 | 1,641 |
| 7 | Soybean hulls | 85 | 1,727 |
| 8 | VitTM Premix, generic | 56 | 1,783 |
| 9 | Corn silage, typical50% of corn silage — Pass 2 | 947 | 2,729 |
100 Ruminants.AI credits — your course's application layer
$20 value
🔒 7-day Keep-the-Credits Guarantee · Secure checkout
The Course Tutor That Never Sleeps
Ask Ruminants.AI anything from the course — "What CNF:peNDF ratio keeps rumen pH above 5.8?" — and get a grounded, study-backed answer in seconds, in any of 45 languages, on web or WhatsApp. Ferraretto teaches the concept; the Tutor helps you apply it at 9 p.m. when a problem won't wait.
The Forage-Report Decoder
Snap a photo or forward the silage PDF. Ruminants.AI parses it into structured numbers — DM, NDF, uNDF, NDFD, starch digestibility, KPS — and hands back what to do, not a wall of text. The exact "read your own silage" skill the course teaches, automated.
The Diet Validator & Fine-Tuner
Drop in the diet file you already use — NDS, AMTS, or your nutritionist's spreadsheet. Ruminants.AI parses the formulation and constraints, then helps you validate and fine-tune for fiber and starch digestibility, against scientific studies and the prices you already pay.
The "Does It Pay?" Economics Check
Before you commit a single load, see the IOFC, FCM, and margin impact of a digestibility change — computed live from your formulation and your prices. Trade a hunch for a number. The course shows you the lever; this shows you the payday.
All four run on your 100 Ruminants.AI credits — across web, WhatsApp, photo, voice note, or PDF, in 45 languages. Register a farm in Farm Mode and every answer comes back in your operational context: your groups, your diets, your prices.
The "keep-the-credits" guarantee
If you can't point to one change worth more than the price, we refund every cent.
Watch Module 1 and run one analysis on your own silage. If you can't name a single change worth more than the price of this course, request your refund right inside the platform within 7 days — no email, no phone call, no reason required. You get every cent back, and your 100 Ruminants.AI credits stay yours. The risk is ours, not yours.
Reading silage in the field — where the science meets the bunk.
Your instructor
Dr. Luiz F. Ferraretto
An animal scientist, not a seed salesman. He's run more maturity and BMR trials than almost anyone working today, and built much of the data the industry now quotes on fermentation, processing, and particle size.
He teaches the way he researches: plainly, skeptically, and with nothing to sell you but the truth about your silage.
Who it's for
Built for people who'd rather read the forage than the sales sheet.
This is for you if…
- You're a dairy nutritionist or consultant tired of guessing which vendor claim to believe
- You manage a dairy and suspect you're leaving milk solids in the bunk or the manure
- You work in feed, forage, or silage additives and need the science behind the sales sheet
- You're a student or technician who wants how-it-actually-works, not how-it's-marketed
It's not for you if…
- You want a list of products to buy. Ferraretto isn't selling hybrids or inoculants.
- You're after a shortcut that skips the why. This teaches you to evaluate, not to copy a recipe.
He's teaching you to evaluate them — a skill that outlasts any product recommendation.
From the field
What students are saying.
Consultants and producers who came for the science — and found the AI that puts it to work.
“It makes the decisions we take on our clients' farms far more assertive.”
The AI adds to our work — and the professors bring a lot of current results.
“Easy, day-to-day information in the palm of your hand.”
This institution keeps bringing new things to market — knowledge we can take straight to our clients.
“The technical level — and the people behind it — delivered.”
Grateful to have taken this corn silage course. Thank you, Santafé, Jessé and family.
Before you ask
Questions, answered.
Is this just the Brazilian course in English?
It's the same world-class science, rebuilt for an English-speaking audience and for diets and forages beyond any single country. The concepts transfer anywhere you grow and ensile corn.
I'm not a PhD — will I follow it?
Yes. Ferraretto teaches concepts, not equations. If you read a forage report or stand at a bunk, you'll keep up.
Will it tell me which hybrid or inoculant to buy?
No — and that's the point. It teaches you to evaluate them yourself, which outlasts any product recommendation.
How long do I have access?
12 months, at your own pace. Rewatch the starch and fermentation sections as often as you need.
What are the 100 credits?
Free access to Ruminants.AI, the AI nutrition platform used in 136 countries. Use them to analyze your silage, validate your diets, check the economics, and ask the course tutor anything — on web or WhatsApp, in 45 languages.
Can I pay in installments?
Yes. Pay USD 399.99 up front, or split it into 5 installments of USD 90.47.
What if it's not for me?
Watch Module 1, run one analysis, and if it's not worth it, request a refund right inside the platform within 7 days — no email, no phone call, no reason required. You keep the credits.
Be one of them
Keep trusting the chart on the sales sheet — or learn to read your own silage.
Every season, the corn you grew decides how much milk it becomes — long before it reaches the cow. The producers and nutritionists who win aren't the ones with the best rep. They're the ones who can read the forage themselves and know what's true.
Your course doesn't end at the last video — it walks out to the bunk with you.
The Masterclass · 100 Ruminants.AI credits · 4 application bonuses
Total value $867.99
or USD 399.99 in full · save $52
12-Month Access · 16 Hours · +100 Ruminants.AI Credits
🔒 7-day Keep-the-Credits Guarantee · Secure checkout
Global agribusiness education for beef and dairy cattle professionals — practical, science-based knowledge you can apply.