The Silo and the Material to Fill It. 



By Prof. I. P. Roberts, Dean of College of Agriculture of Cornell University. 

 Read at meeting of New York State Dairymen's Association at Watertowu. 



It is now about twenty years since the practice of ensilaging 

 cattle foods attracted wide attention in the United States. The 

 crude method of storing green material in shallow excavations 

 in the earth, formerly practiced in France and Germany, has 

 been greatly improved in the United States. The practice of 

 ensilaging green material was introduced with a great flourish 

 of trumpets. Few knew anything of the true principles of the 

 subject, therefore any one could propound theories without the 

 slightest danger of being successfully contradicted. The first 

 siloes built were usually tall, oblong stone or brick structures, 

 partly or entirely above ground. In the eariy days it was be- 

 lieved that silage could not be well kept, except it was placed 

 under great pressure. The winter's concentrated feeding stuffs, 

 cord wood, stones, earth, and even pig iron, were placed on the 

 covered material to weight it down. In a few cases expensive 

 screws were brought into use to secure pressure, but with all this 

 pressure, the silage was usually unsatisfactory, for no amount of 

 pressure could force the locked-up air out of the material. The 

 more the material was pressed, the more did the air tend toward 

 the cold masoned walls, where in time, it ascended and carried 

 with it the moisture of the silage, and by reason of this partial 

 drying at the corners and on the edges ; opportunity was afforded 

 for air to circulate somewhat freely along the walls to the great 

 detriment of the silage. These unsatisfactory structures were 

 soon supplanted by oblong, thribble-boarded ones, which proved 

 to be nearly as expensive as the stone or brick structures, and far 

 more perishable, although this resulted in an improved quality of 

 silage. As the silage deteriorated most in the corners, the prac- 

 tice of cutting the corners off came into vogue. Still the material 

 of which the silo was constructed decayed rapidly, and moldy 



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