VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 45 



FORAGE CROPS. 



A very large share of Vermont farmers are dairymen. 

 Every one of them has a barn, more or less well equipped for 

 the winter feeding of his stock. They all labor in summer, 

 sowing, cultivating and harvesting crops for winter use. A 

 large share of them carry, to all intents and purposes, dry cows 

 only in the winter, working hard all summer simply to keep the 

 cows alive during the winter while they are bringing in little or 

 no income. These same men, however, often take no thought 

 of means of summer feeding of cows. They depend solely 

 upon the pastures. It happens all too frequently, however, 

 that the pastures dry up and the cows shrink seriously in their 

 milk flow. It is a difficult thing to turn the tide backwards. A 

 cow once shrunk in milk seldom regains her former yield, and 

 then with difficulty. It seems the part of wisdom for the 

 farmers to divert some of the energy which they now devote to 

 the growing of food for the maintenance of dry cows to the 

 growing of food for keeping the milk flow during summer. 

 The larger use of soiling crops, such as oats and peas, hunga- 

 rian, rowen and the like, is well worth while. Considerable 

 amounts may be grown without very great expenditure of time 

 or money, and they are excellently well adapted to help out a 

 short or dry pasture. 



There is, perhaps, nothing better for this purpose than 

 silage. It has been very thoroughly demonstrated that a pound 

 of digestible dry matter can be placed in the cow's manger by 

 way of the silo cheaper than in any other manner. The silo 

 capacity of a dairy farm should be made large enough, in my 

 judgment, to enable one to use silage all the time. The silo 

 intended for summer use, however, should be deep and with a 

 relatively small surface area, to avoid what otherwise might 

 prove to be large losses owing to fermentation. The stave silo 

 is now coming rapidly into vogue, and is proving so very useful 

 for most purposes, and is so readily put up and comparatively 

 so inexpensive for its tonnage capacity, that it is to be hoped 

 that the number of silos in Vermont will rapidly increase in 

 the near future. 



STOCK FEEDING. 



One of the modern notions, although perhaps not so 

 modern as some of those I have been advancing, is that the 

 science of stock feeding is worthy of consideration. The 

 more experience accumulates, both of the scientific or practi- 

 cal nature, the more we are inclined to think that the old Ger- 

 man standard proposed in the middle of the sixties for the 

 feeding of the milch cow, is not far from truth. Later investi- 



