There are plenty of examples in the literature of silages harvested from the same sward being different due to additive-treatment, digestibility, fermentation quality, etc. and resulting in different dry matter intakes. In these studies the treatments were imposed with the animals having no choice of diet. However, little evidence exists as to which silage or mixture of silages the animal would eat if given free access to a number of treatments. Therefore the present study was designed to evaluate the effects of different silage fermentations firstly on the preference of dairy animals for a particular silage and secondly on the rate of silage intake.