456 



STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



When corn is injured by heavy frost it should immediately be put 

 into the silo to prevent rapid drying out. When corn has lost too much 

 water, due to over maturity, or after freezing, to make succulent silage, 

 water in sufficient amounts should be added when the silo is filled. 



The practice of snapping the ears from the corn and making silage of 

 stover, reduces the feeding value of the silage. This method may be a 

 convenient way to handle stover where ear corn is used to feed hogs or 

 other stock, but it cannot be expected that silage made from stover will 

 produce as good gains with livestock as silage made from stalks carrying 

 the ear. Stover silage is a cheap form of roughage for carrying breed- 

 ing stock or feeders over winter, but is not advised for feeding dairy 

 stock for production or for fattening beef animals. 



Good fields of silage corn will yield from 12 to 16 tons of 

 material per acre. 



silage 



HOGGING DOWN CORN 



Hogging down, or pasturing off, corn with hogs is a practice which has 

 gained rapidly in lower Michigan counties during the past few years of la- 

 bor scarcity. It has been proven by numerous experiments that this method 

 of harvesting corn is economical in saving labor of harvesting and of 

 feeding, and also from the standpoint of the gain and weight of hogs 

 being fattened. The manure produced, is left directly on the ground, 

 thus benefiting the land and preventing a waste of fertility. Corn may 

 be pastured in the field with sheep in the same manner. 



One man can handle a larger acreage of corn and feed out more hogs 

 under this system than by other metliods. The hogs sliould not be al- 

 lowed to cover too much ground at one time. A good practice is to fence 

 off the part of the field to be hogged down by use of a 2 ft. woven wire 

 fence, held by anchor posts at either side of the field and supported by 

 occasional posts or tied with binder twine to hills of corn. Hogs should 

 be turned in when corn is in the hard dough or almost mature stage. 



26. Alfalfa paves the way for big yields of com. 



