SILO MADE AVAILABLE. 199 



half or nine inches apart, and having a stalk as near as may 

 be once in nine inches. Some of those stalks weighed nine 

 pounds apiece. 



Mr. Taft. I asked that question, because I was at a silo 

 in Saxonville, on Mr. Micah Sampson's farm, and in the 

 barn he had thirty-three oxen ; and the man who ran the 

 place told me he put them in in November, weighing twenty- 

 three or twenty-four hundred to the yoke by actual weight. 

 He kept them in the barn thirteen weeks. They were then 

 sold, and were going the next day to Boston ; and he esti- 

 mated the weight of the oxen — and I think he was not a 

 great ways out — at thirty -eight hundred to the yoke. They 

 were fed on ensilage, and all the corn-meal they would eat. 

 I then asked Mr. Neal, who had charge of it, what was the 

 best material to put in the silo. He said, " The best quality 

 of English hay, just as it is heading out." How much hay 

 he would grow to the acre, I do not know. Of course, there 

 is land that will grow ninety or a hundred bushels of corn 

 to the acre, manured as they manure first-class land on Con- 

 cord River. 



Mr. Ware. I will mention that I put in three acres of 

 heavy rowen that was just heading out. 



Mr. Taft. What would that weigh to the acre ? 



Mr. Ware. It would cure probably two tons to the acre 

 when it was green : I don't know how much it would weigh ; 

 but I had a very heavy growth, and I mixed it with the 

 corn. My cows eat it all up clean : there is no waste. The 

 three calves are eating ensilage, and they are thriving : they 

 look remarkably well. The pigs are rather young, and I do 

 not feed them on that alone : they have about half of that 

 at the present time. Part of my horses will eat it all up : 

 the other three have not yet arrived at the point where they 

 will eat it as they do hay. 



Question. How do you cut your rowen ? 



Mr. Ware. I cut that a little longer than the corn. I 

 cut the corn three-eighths of an inch long, or as near that as 

 may be. I alter the machine to cut the rowen, and cut it an 

 inch and a half long. 



Question. What kind of corn do you raise ? 



Mr. Wake. It was Blunt's prolific. I think that is 

 better corn than Southern dent corn, because it inclines to 



