FARM DEPARTMENT. 245 



any way at so little expense as you can in the silo. It costs almost if not 

 quite as much to cut an acre of dried corn fodder as an acre of green, save 

 the one item of hauling — you have the expense of hauling, binding stalks and 

 setting up in shocks. The corn must be cribbed, be hauled to mill, crushed 

 to cob meal or shelled and ground, hauled home ; all items that count and 

 add materially to the cost of feed. When you put your corn in the silo 

 the one operation finishes it, and all you have to do is to place it all prepared 

 before your animals, who look their gratitude for suc£ palatable rations. 

 You will not be charged with want of sense or fanaticism if you build a 

 silo. 



I want to controvert the often expressed idea that the small farmer cannot 

 afford the silo, I believe if the farmer with few acres looks at this question 

 rightly, he will find the silo an essential adjunct to his farm dependencies 

 quite as much, aye more, than the large land owner. The small farmer with 

 limited area of land is necessitated to crop more continuously than his 

 neighbor with a much larger acreage. He needs in every possible way to 

 secure the fertilizing material that shall replace the drains that this closer 

 cropping is making on his fields. How can he do it so cheaply, so surely, 

 as by growing large crops of ensilage corn that will give him the main 

 fodder necessary to enable him to feed for the market or the dairy through 

 the winter much more stock than his acres will carry in the summer? 



VIEWS OF PROMINENT FARMERS OF MICHIGAN ON ENSILAGE. 



The following schedule of questions is the one referred to on a former page 

 of this bulletin, and the replies from prominent farmers in different sections 

 of the State will be read with interest and profit, especially by persons in 

 their vicinity who contemplate building a silo : 



QUESTIONS RELATIVE TO SILO AND ENSILAGE. 



1. When did you build your silo? 



2. How is it constructed? 



3. What crops have you ensilaged? 



4. What variety of corn have you found most satisfactory? 



5. Do you plant in hills or drills? 



6. How much seed to the acre do you use? 



7. At what stage of growth do you cut? 



8. What is the average yield per acre? 



9. Is this yield estimated or weighed? 



10. Have you ever put corn in the silo uncut? 



11. Do you fill the silo rapidly or slowly, and why? 



12. Do you pack the ensilage as closely as possible during the filling? 



13. What do jiou use for covering? 



14. Do you advise moderate weighting? 



15. What doel your ensilage cost per ton or per acre? 



16. How many months after filling the silo was it opened? 



17. What was the condition of the ensilage? 



18. Did it change after opening, if so, how? 



19. Do you feed ensilage alone, or in combination with dried fodder and 

 grain? 



