232 EXPERIMENT STATION— BULLETINS. 



NO. 47.-FAKM DEPARTMENT. 



SILOS AND ENSILAGE. 



I. Seven years' experience with Silos and Ensilage at the College Farm. 



II. Views of Prominent Farmers of Michigan on Ensilage. 



III. Experiments with Ensilage vs. Corn harvested in the ordinary manner. 



IV. Comparative test of varieties of Ensilage Corn. 



V. Forage plants, Lucerne, Orchard grass. 



Our experience with ensilage on the College farm dates from the year 1881, 

 when the State legislature made a special appropriation of 11,000 "for the 

 purpose of conducting experiments with ensilage for the feeding of animals, 

 by the farm department of the Agricultural College." To Hon. J. S. Esta- 

 brook, of Saginaw, and Hon. Thos. Mars, of Berrien, chairmen of the House 

 and Senate committees on the College, the credit is largely due of securing 

 this appropriation, which made it possible for us to give this new method of 

 preserving fodder crops some attention, especially at that stage in its history 

 when it had very few advocates among agricultural teachers and writers, and 

 when a majority of farmers were inclined to think it one of the most 

 visionary and foolish suggestions ever made in the name of agricultural 

 progress. A small silo was built in the basement of a grain barn then in 

 process of erection, so that it might be utilized as a root cellar if the 

 ensilage should prove a failure. So far as I am aware this was the first silo 

 in Michigan. 



Our experience with ensilage has been very satisfactory and our verdict of 

 approval has been more and more confirmed with each succeeding year, as 

 reference to our reports of the last eight years will show. Large silos have 

 been erected and we now depend on ensilage for a good portion of our win- 

 ter's food for our stock. 



Seven years of experience have taught us some things about the silo and 

 the questions that relate to it. But while there can be no doubt of the value 

 of this method and of the fact that it is no longer an experiment, but conceded 

 by all intelligent men to be a valuable adjunct to our methods of storing 

 food for stock, there are still many unsettled or half-settled questions relat- 

 ing to it that demand attention. NothiDg succeeds like success, and since the 

 silo has come into favor, it has found many ready writers to urge its adoption. 



I have endeavored to be temperate and conservative in my claims for the 

 silo, and not to jump at my conclusions; for I fully believe that the half 

 digested statements of many enthusiasts, without practical knowedge, have 



