TWELFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 155 



Professor F. T. King, of the Indiana Experiment Station ad- 

 dressed the convention on "Silage for Beef Cattle." 



SILAGE FOR FATTENING CATTLE. 



PROF. F. T. KING, LAFAYETTE, IND. 



Mr, Chairman, members of the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association, 

 it affords me great pleasure as a representative of Purdue Experiment 

 Station to present to this organization of stockmen some of the things in 

 regard to meat production that have passed entirely from the uncertain 

 realm of theory and speculation to the solid ground of established facts. 

 The Purdue Experiment Station has for several years been using corn 

 silage for fattening steers with such good results that we are coming to 

 look upon the matter as practically settled, with only methods of feeding 

 remaining to be investigated. It is principally of the results we have se- 

 cured I shall speak of today. 



The time is past when the producer of beef on high-priced land can af- 

 ford to be without a silo. It has long been known that a very large per 

 cent of the feeding value of corn as shown by chemical composition is 

 found in the stalk. Stockmen, however, have been unable to get more than 

 a small per cent of the feeding value of the roughage produced by the 

 corn plant. Within recent years the beef cattlemen have begun adopting 

 a method employed by farmers of Europe for several hundreds of years 

 and by dairymen of this country for scores of years. In fact, the method 

 is so old that it is a source of wonder that there is a stock farm to be 

 found in America where it is not employed. This method consits in con- 

 fining in an air-tight chamber feed cut while green enough to contain a 

 large per cent of water. The form of enclosure has passed through a pe- 

 riod of evolution, and finally settled into the modern silo with circular, 

 air-tight walls. When corn in about the proper stage for shocking is cut 

 into pieces one-fourth to three-fourths of an inch long and packed in the 

 silo, a process of fermentation takes place that causes some chemical 

 changes in the mass of feed. This fermentation is accompanied by a 

 softening of the woody portions of the corn plant, with the result that a 

 soft, palatable food relished by live stock of all kinds is formed. Silage 

 is so relished by cattle that forty pounds and even fifty pounds are often 

 consumed by two-year-old cattle during the early part of the feeding pe- 

 riod. It is a food of much the same nature as grass, and affects the cattle 

 in much the same way. In fact, the same results that can be expected in 

 summer from good blue grass pasture can be secured in winter by the use 

 of corn silage, and can be produced from about one-third the land. 



It has been recently said by a very prominent authority on agricultural 

 topics in the corn belt that a revolution in cattle feeding was to take place 

 with the erection of silos in all the cattle feeding yards of the country. 

 This revolution is now rapidly taking place. Probably no previous year 

 has seen the erection of as many silos as has the year of 1911. Very 

 few progressive farmers have not heard or read of the great benefits to 

 be derived from the silo, but many have hesitated about investing in one. 



