168 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



clear through to April. I think that is less trouble than it is 

 to make ensilage. 



Mr. RuNDEL. You get no additional nutritive quality, but 

 your cattle will eat stalks and everything where it is ensilaged. 

 I have not teen able to cure any wliere it matured so that my 

 cattle would eat everything. 



Mr. Bill. Will it pay ? That is the point that should 

 come before this meeting. Look at the first investment in 

 building a silo ; then look at the great expense of cutting up 

 that corn, or clover, or whatever you cut up to pack in that 

 silo. Look at the machinery which you are obliged to have 

 after you have built your silo. It costs a great deal to trans- 

 port that material. Now take the other side of the question. 

 In the fall of the year, when your corn has become ripe and 

 ready to cut up, what does it cost the farmer to put his men 

 at work to shock that corn ? It remains in those shocks a 

 reasonable length of time, and the weather cures it ready for 

 husking, and the stalks to be deposited in the stacks. My 

 stock are subsisting to-day more than one-half upon that corn- 

 fodder. Now take the meal that will come from the corn 

 from each one of those bundles of stalks, feed that to your 

 animals, and how sleek and fat they will come out in the 

 spring! And how much more profitable it must be, taking 

 the expense into account, to cut that corn up, give them the 

 well-cured stalks, and the poor hay that is cut on those bogs 

 in cranberry meadows ! How much better it will be for the 

 stock, h(Tw much cheaper for the farmer, and in how much 

 better sliape would liis stock come out in the spring ! 



Mr. Myrick. In confirmation of Mr. Bill's remarks, and 

 in reply to our friend who inquired if there was any one who 

 had had experience with ensilage who was dissatisfied with it, 

 I would state that there is in this paper Q'-The New England 

 ITomestead^^') a short article giving an unfavorable view of 

 ensilage ; the first one, I think the record will show, that we 

 have received. With the Chairman's permission, I will read 

 it. The article was written by Frederick Conant, of Middle- 

 sex County, Mass. : 



