306 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Bran was too expensive to give sufficient profit. While my neigh- 

 bors were paying $12 to $14 for hay per ton to keep their stock 

 through the winter, I fed silage raised on my farm ; this induced me 

 to build another silo, so this fall I built silo number two, after Mr. 

 Cobb's plan, of ^Monmouth, III. 



It is twenty feet in diameter and thirty-four feet high, four feet 

 of this is under ground, made of rock. On the top of the foundation, 

 the staves are 2x4 pine, 14 and 16 feet long, nailed together with 40 

 penny spikes. This silo is filled with corn and sorghum, about ecjual 

 parts, ^^'e are feeding the silage from this silo now and it gives good 

 satisfaction. I am sure that silage is the best winter feed that I ever 

 fed in Missouri, either for milch cows or for young stock, and hogs 

 will eat it readily and it makes a good change for them. 



You can build a silo as cheaply as any other building to keep feed 

 in if you consider the quality of the feed. 



Should there be three or four farmers in a neighborhood who would 

 each build a silo, and then buy an ensilage cutter in partnership all 

 could have the use of the one machine and by exchanging work, let- 

 ting each man have his place at the cutter so that he w'ould work to the 

 best advantage, much time would be gained and trouble prevented. I 

 filled silo Xo. 2 at the rate of eight feet per day with a thirteen-inch cut- 

 ter. I used a Deering corn binder to cut the corn, and have the corn 

 hauled in on low wheeled Avagons, and each man loads his own w^agon. 

 It cost me but 35 cents per ton to put up my ensilage this year and it 

 was hauled from 40 rods to one-half mile. I like ensilage because it 

 is handy to feed and stock will eat ninety per cent of it if it is properly 

 put up. While my neighbors are digging mouldy corn-fodder out of the 

 snow drift, I feed green feed in the dry. 



Where corn is made into ensilage it makes more manure and of a 

 better quality. My wheat made ten bushels more per acre this year 

 on the ground where I had spread manure from the stable where en- 

 silage and bran was fed than it did where manure w-as scraped up from 

 the yard where fodder and sorghum was fed, and on the same quality 

 of ground. 



Notwithstanding the criticisms made against the use of the silo in 

 this section of our nation, I have found that it is profitable, and has 

 even done more for me than I anticipated. When a Missouri cow will 

 produce butter that sells for 33 cents per pound, why not feed her silage? 



DISCI^SSION. 



Mr. Patterson : Silos and ensilages are necessary things for mak- 

 ing the most profit in dairying and I think they are just as profitable 



