FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART V. 251 



^will not be more than nine cents per day, and still the ration is sufficier.i 

 to maintain the cow in normal flesh while doing better than avera^^e 

 dairy work. 



Until the advent of the silo dairymen have been forced to part with 

 much good coin in exchange for feeds rich in protein, as without them 

 it has been found impossible to obtain a satisfactory flow of milk; with 

 the silo this is all changed. It is entirely possible for our cows to do 

 good dairy work if they have silage cllover hay, corn or barley meal in 

 the proper proportion, and tlie money that formerly went for commer- 

 cial feeds can be placed where it will give greater satisfaction. 



At home we have kept a dairy of twenty cows the past year withoiii, 

 an acre of pasture. Until July fifteenth the cows were given a large yard 

 and fed on corn silage, clover hay and wheat bran. The bran was used 

 because our corn crop last year was a total failure. July fifteenth they 

 w-ere given the run of a Thirty-acre meadow from which we had cut a 

 heavy crop of June and Alsike clover and timothy. This is the first 

 year we have tried the plan, and I am glad to be able to say it has 

 proven entirely satisfactory. We can not afford to devote good tillable 

 land, worth sixty dollars per acre, to pasture when, by a little more 

 work, the cows can be fed and the entire farm cropped. Without the 

 aid of the silo this method could not be successfully adopted. 



A silo sixteen feet in diameter and thirty feet high will hold one 

 hundred and thirty tons of corn, or the crop of nine acres. In this 

 amount we have approximately five thousand pounds of protein as much 

 as is found in thirty tons of good clover hay. or the product of possibly 

 twelve acres; or as much as is contained in fifty tons of timothy hay, 

 twenty-five acres of an average crop. Thus it will be seen that in one 

 acre of corn silage we have as much protein as in one and one third, 

 acres of clover hay or in two and seven ninths acres of timothy hay. 



It has been quite generally conceded for years that clover hay is 

 the most desirable roughage the dairyman could produce, but experiment 

 has demonstrated that corn silage will furnish cheaper protein, beside 

 the advantage of the succulent nature of the feed, thus giving our cows 

 a ration closely resembling that of the summer season. 



If we provide our cows Avith warm barns, w^arm water and corn 

 silage as a part of their daily ration, other things being equal, we may 

 reasonably expect them to do^ better work in the winter than in the 

 summer months. Then again it will be remembered that the winter 

 market for butter is 30 to 60 per cent better than the summer market. 

 We can in this w^ay do the greater part of our dairy work in the winter 

 season, when the higher prices prevail and our time is not so fully occu- 

 pied with field work as is the case during the summer season. 



As a supplement to pasture grass there is nothing that will give as 

 satisfactory results as corn silage. It can be used the entire summer 

 and the carrying capacity of the farm greatly increased. No matter 

 how busy we may be. or how inclement the weather, the necessary feed 

 is always at hand, and the cov^^s are not necessarily subjected to a few 

 days of insufficient feed, with a prop'ortionate shrinkage in the milk 

 yield. 



