1882.] ExNSILAGE. 91 



ENSILAGE. 

 By W. R. Hurd, Forestville, Conn. 



When I accepted the invitation of your Secretary to speak upon 

 this topic, it was stipulated that I should be permitted to give an 

 extempore talk in place of a written paper; you therefore will not 

 expect the finish and elegance of a more formal lecture for which 

 I have neither taste nor time, if indeed I possess the requisite 

 skill. 



At the beginning, I wish to invite any one present to interrupt 

 me at any point during the talk with question or comment, feeling 

 sure that the value of the discussion will be increased, even if the 

 thread of my talk be for the moment broken. 



Some of you may have come here to-day, intending to decide 

 for or against the adoption of ensilage upon what you hear from 

 this platform. I ask you to do nothing of the kind, but to weigh 

 carefully what you may hear, to investigate fairly and fully until 

 you are convinced it is either a method for you to adopt or reject. 

 Do not decide off-hand that you do not want it. Do not, on the 

 other hand, move one stone or shovel of dirt; do not buy one 

 board or nail for a silo, until you understand theoretically the prin- 

 ciple underlying the successful preservation of forage in silos. 



Honest inquirers are liable to be misled by two or rather three 

 classes of writers; the too enthusiastic friends of a system; those 

 people who understand with their elbows, and who are constantly 

 misstating the claims of the friends of the system; and its foes. I 

 have in my hand a clipping from a recent paper which, if authen- 

 tic, illustrates the first class; if apocryphal, the second; it says: 

 "Last year (1880), Mr. C. W. Mills fed for seven months one 

 hundred and forty animals, cows and horses, from ten acres of 

 corn fodder ensilage." That is the equivalent of eight and one- 

 sixteenth head per acre for twelve months, and if full rations were 

 fed, necessitated the yield of about nine hundred tons of ensilage 

 on the ten acres. Pretty good farming that, even for New Jersey, 

 where Mr. Mills lives. The same article says, '• The past summer 



