The Forage Analysis Assurance (FAA) Group, comprising 15 Member laboratories located across the UK and Ireland, marks its 25-year anniversary this year, and have just completed their 2024–2025 silage testing Proficiency Testing (PT) Scheme performance review during the Group’s summer Technical and General Meetings on 10 July 2025 at Massey Feeds, Holmes Chapel, Cheshire.
Performance Highlights
- Results from the 2024–2025 PT Scheme year show continued advancement in laboratory testing performance across grass, maize, and whole crop silages.
- Enhanced testing accuracy enables farmers and nutritionists to make more informed silage feeding decisions, resulting in
- Optimised livestock performance
- Improved financial returns
- Reduced feeding inefficiencies
- Lowered farming environmental impact
The new 2025-2026 season begins with a call for wider laboratory participation by those offering silage analysis and renewed industry focus on silage assessment.
Proficiency Testing Scheme (PT Scheme)
Participation in the PT Scheme enables laboratories to assess the quality of their forage analysis and continuously refine their methods to improve accuracy. This gives farmers confidence in the nutritional analysis reports provided by FAA Group member laboratories.
Each laboratory receives nine rounds of ring test samples annually, with ten different silage samples per round. These include grass, maize, and whole crop silages, ensuring comprehensive proficiency testing. Upon receiving the samples, laboratories analyse them using their standard commercial methods, such as Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). Their analytical results are then compared with wet chemistry analysis results produced by the FAA Group’s reference laboratory. Performance is benchmarked across participating labs, and statistical evaluations used to generate a performance grade, published monthly on the FAA Group website. In addition to supporting analytical quality assurance, the data from the PT Scheme contributes to the FAA Group’s ongoing development and refinement of their NIRS calibration equations for grass, maize, and whole crop silages.
The New Silage Season 2025 -2026
FAA Group feedback indicates that grass silage quality is average to good this season, but nutritional quality around that has been noted to show greater variation than in previous years. This emphasises the need for regular testing of silages by a proficient laboratory. This could be at least every month, but definitely as silages are seen to change or new clamps opened.
The new PT Scheme year commences in August for the FAA Group laboratories, with the first sampling and testing round of grass silage. Grading results for this first round of silage will be published on the FAA Group website in September.
Support & Resources
The FAA Group has released a helpful Silage Sampling Video Guide to support and promote best silage sampling practices on farm. To view this video, learn about Membership, NIRS equations, and to explore the work of the FAA Group and its mission to improve the accuracy of forage analysis, visit www.faagroup.co.uk or email
Who are the Forage Analysis Assurance Group?
Founded in 2000, FAA Group Member laboratories in UK and Ireland, collectively analyse around 70,000 samples of grass, maize and whole cereal silage annually. FAA Group Members are committed to achieving the best level of silage analytical reliability currently available. The monthly Proficiency Testing (PT) Scheme, based on supplied standard samples, enables each Member laboratory to ensure the conformity of their instruments and testing processes. The FAA Group have developed a validated set of NIRs calibrations for grass, maize and whole crop silages that are available for use.
Full FAA Group membership is open to all laboratories and businesses with activities relating to forage, along with an Associate Membership option available to others such as forage analysing equipment suppliers, those involved with silage making processes and additives, nutritionists and more.
This Press Release downloadable as a PDF here: StrongerSilageAccuracy2024-2025.pdf
Experts from Forage Analysis Assurance Group are featured in the June 2025 issue of Farmers Guide, sharing top tips on current grass quality and how to maximise silage quality.
FAA Group members, Massey Feeds, and Trouw Nutrition along with AIC hosted a silage sampling and testing training day recently in Derbyshire for Trading Standards East Midlands. David Wilde of Massey Feeds led the practical on-farm silage sampling training session, on a dairy farm just outside Ashbourne, thanks to TR & EC Ball.
David explained that due to the variable nature of silage, collecting representative samples across the clamp is vital and it is essential to remove as much air as possible from silage sample bags, making sure these are well sealed. He also explained that as the silage sample can spoil out of the clamp, and that this continues with time, it should be sent to the testing laboratory quickly to ensure the analysis accurately reflects what is being fed to the stock.
The group also toured the laboratory at Trouw Nutrition with Richard Tunnicliffe, starting with sample receipt and logging, followed by a practical demonstration of how they are prepared and scanned to determine their nutritional content by Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). The TSOs learnt more about the Feed Adviser Register, and how and why Advisers rely on accurate forage nutrient analysis to formulate diets.
For more information on forage sampling visit the FAA page https://www.faagroup.co.uk/foragesampling/taking-samples.