ANIMAL GROWTH AND NUTRITION. 253 



by Professor Goessmann. Siicll analyses are really worth 

 nothing, unless they come to us in such shape that we can 

 depend upon them as comparing the nutritive qualities of 

 ensilage with the green fodder. I claim that instead of going 

 backward, and adopting the old system or the old plan of 

 ensilaging, where all this great loss has been proved to exist, 

 we should go forward and onward, and adopt the best system 

 of bnilding silos, and the best method of making ensilage ; 

 and I believe, that, when we are able to present careful analy- 

 ses of ensilage preserved in that manner, they will show very 

 different results. 



Now, I think it is right and just to consider all systems of 

 producing fodder in a fair way. If we have a theory to set 

 up, let us sustain it and establish it as well as we may ; and, 

 when we are discussing other theories and other methods, let 

 us discuss them with fairness, that we may, as practical men, 

 judge between the two systems. Now, it is unfair, in reckon- 

 ing the cost of ensilage, to say that the expense is so great 

 that no farmer can afford to use it. Why ? Because, as was 

 stated here this morning by the speaker, the cost of a silo 

 that would hold one hundred tons would be four hundred 

 and fifty dollars, and adding that to the cost of growing your 

 crop and cutting it would make the cost of your ensilage 

 very high. So it would : but, when you build a silo properly 

 and substantially, you build it for all time ; it is a permanent 

 structure. You might with just as much propriety add to 

 the cost of your English hay that you feed to your cows 

 through the winter the cost of the barn that you have built 

 to hold your cattle and your hay, as to add the cost of your 

 silo to the cost of your ensilage for that year : therefore I 

 say that position is unfair. 



Again: in considering the statements, "the exaggerated 

 statements " as they were called, concerning ensilage, I say 

 it is unfair to take an inbtance (the only one that was men- 

 tioned) of a man who had fed his cow upon forty pounds of 

 ensilage, and, I think, three pounds of cotton-seed meal, and 

 obtained sixteen quarts of milk per day. The albuminoids 

 contained in that milk would be more than would be con- 

 tained in the ensilage and the cotton-seed meal, showing an 

 absurdity. Of course, it was expected that the production 

 of that quantity of milk would draw upon the flesh of the 



