250 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. Anderson : Did you feed all that stock off thirteen acres? 



Mr. Trow: Yes; that is, from silage. 



Mr. Anderson: That is about seventy-five per cent of all 

 the coarse food you gave them? 



Mr. Trow: Yes; we fed our cows this winter four or five 

 pounds of ground oats with a little corn in it, and what hay 

 they would consume, which was but very little. 



Mr. Wright: Do you expect to give your cows as much. 

 silage as they will eat? 



Mr. Trow: Yes; as much as they will eat up clean. 



Question: Have you a stave silo? 



Mr. Trow: Yes; but a stave silo must be well built and 

 fastened well to the barn to prevent its blowing down. We have 

 a chute between the silo and the barn, but you don't want ta 

 depend entirely upon that chute to hold the silo to the barn^ 

 because in the summer time the hoops might become loose. 

 We have a guy wire around the silo and fastened to the barn to 

 hold it in place in windstorms. If you build a tub silo get a 

 Washington fir. You can get it twenty- eight or thirty feet 

 long and it will not cost you any more than twelve or fourteen 

 foot lengths. Bevel the staves, and if you are a carpenter, 

 dovetail it, or get it tongued and grooved. 



Mr. Anderson: Have you a roof on your silo ? 



Mr. Trow: Yes, a roof is all right, a nice shingle roof, but 

 the only advantage of this is in the looks of it. Just take rough 

 boards and you will have a cheap, simple roof that will answer 

 every purpose in keeping the building in shape. It does not 

 harm silage to get wet . 



Mr. Barney: I have one silo and am considering building^ 

 another. I have considered the matter of building a stave silo* 

 Have you any trouble by ensilage freezing in a stave silo ? 



Mr. Trow : Right along the sides it will freeze, but keep a 

 spade in the silo and keep it loosened up. In the body it will 

 not freeze, but along the sides, in such weather as this, it will 

 freeze, and if you allow it to stand frozen at the sides it gets- 

 thicker. And you want to feed the frozen silage out as soon as 

 it thaws. The King silo, I am certain, is the best silo to build, 

 but the only trouble is the cost, and that is one thing in the way 

 of getting farmers to build them, the matter of expending three 

 hundred or four hundred dollars. 



