ANIMAL GROWTH AXD XUTRITIOX. 241 



COST OF SILOS. 



Several men present who have silos are represented as 

 working farmers. Each gives me figures of cost that show, 

 for each ton of silo capacity, a cost of three dollars. If we 

 assume an acre of fodder-corn to yield twenty-five tons, it 

 will cost seventy-five dollars for silo-room for each acre of 

 ground, the least interest of which is four dollars and a half; 

 and we have, in addition to that, macliinery for handling and 

 cutting up. This outlay is more than the average value of 

 good land, and requires more capital to make pits than to 

 buy the farm with buildings on it. What would seventy-five 

 dollars per acre of stock, tools, chemicals, etc., do for a farm ? 

 Yet the pit itself is non-productive. 



In answer to the claim that it enables the growth of more 

 food per acre, it may be said that no known facts warrant 

 the statement, while some controvert it. What quantities 

 of fodder-corn are actually raised ? In consulting a dozen 

 good farmers, on farms better than the average, only one 

 claimed to have raised twenty-five tons of green fodder ; 

 several " guessed " that they had twenty tons, and called it 

 a good crop ; mere than one-half thought they got but 

 fifteen tons. Desiring to put it at its best, we name twenty- 

 five tons as all the probable average product. Of this, 

 twenty-one tons and a half are water. As three tons and 

 a half of dry matter of hay would carry three-fifths of a toj/ 

 of water, we find we have to handle about twenty-one tons 

 of water in the green corn-fodder ; or, if field-cured as fieid- 

 coru, this dry matter would carry only a ton and a sixth 

 water, or twenty tons and a third needlessly. 



An owner of a silo represented, at yesterday's session, that 

 it cost him one dollar per ton to put liis fodder-corn into his 

 silo : therefore twenty dollars and two-thirds is paid for carry- 

 ing water. Deducting this from the value* of the three tons 

 and a half of dry matter of fodder, and a very serious per 

 cent of its value is paid for handling water. Again : this 

 three tons and a half of dry matter I have grown this year 

 in clover at much less cost per acre. Two gentlemen present 

 represent that they have grown, the past season, four tons of 

 Hungarian grass per acre (a crop, like corn, adapted to dry 

 lands). We have in these crops as much dr}- matter per 



