768 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



was furnishing them more heat than they desired and they wanted to 

 waste some of it in the open air. It will not do at all to leave silage- 

 fed ca ttle,and especially young cattle, exposed to the weather. The 

 feed will be largely thrown away if this is done. We also found during 

 our three first winters' experience in feeding silage that it is impossible 

 to keep the cattle in proper condition as to bedding with earth floors in 

 the barns and sheds. It is absolutely necessary, when considerable num- 

 bers are being fed together, to have solid floors of some kind, and we 

 have consequently concreted all our cattle sheds and barns, and this 

 effectively remedies the trouble. There is no waste in feeding silage, 

 nothing to throw out for bedding and to keep the cattle out of the mud, 

 as with feeding shock corn. These concrete floors therefore require bed- 

 ding, and for this we use wheat straw in liberal quantities and clean the 

 sheds out two or three times each week. It is expensive to provide the 

 concrete floors, but they should last almost indefinitely, and the amount 

 of manure annually saved by them is a considerable item; but, again, 

 this is an item upon which the average cattle feeder does not place much 

 vdlue, and it would have little effect in influencing his judgment or action. 



Third — The greatest difficulty of all which we have experienced is 

 the question of the labor at silo filling time. When we are 

 ready to commence filling the silos nearly everybody else is commencing 

 to cut corn, and it is frequently hard to get enough hands. The regular 

 force of hands on the farm must all be drafted into service and every 

 other kind of work stopped. We run two large cutters, and it takes a 

 force of about twenty-five men and teams to keep them going. This kind 

 of a force on the farm can be managed all right for a day or two in 

 wheat thrashing time, but when you have three or four weeks' steady 

 pull at silo filling it takes a deal of patience and perserverence to keep 

 such a force of men moving. The novelty of the thing wears off and 

 there is nothing in it but heavj^ work. However, we have each year 

 managed to get through the job all right, and there is a sense of relief and 

 satisfaction in knowing that the work of hajidling the corn crop is 

 through instead of being uragged out through all the fall, winter, and 

 spring months, as would be the case if the corn were to be cut, husked, 

 and" fed out in the usual way. 



I have given the principal advantages and disadvantages which our 

 experience in feeding silage to' beef cattle has developed. I think they 

 each, and possibly some others, will arise in almost any cattle feeder's 

 experience in the corn belt proper. From a consideration of them it is 

 clear that not every man who handles beef cattle should build a silo. 



Some already have more feed apparently than they care to handle — 

 they need more cattle rather than more feed. Others may not desire or 

 may be unable to incur the expense necessary to prepare to properly 

 feed silage. Still others may not wish to assume the additional care 

 and worry incident to a 50 per cent increase in their holdings of live 

 stock; but to the active, energetic, intelligent, capable owner of fertile 

 corn and clover or «orn and alfalfa farms anywhere in the corn belt, Avho 

 is managing and controlling his lands himself and desires t« devote them 

 to stock raising and stock feeding purposes and is ambitious to attain 



