254 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



takes three cents . " "I haven't the three cents." The ferry- 

 man said, ''Well, you poor wretch, if you have not as much as 

 three cents you are just as well off on this side as on the other." 

 With that class of farmers I would not advise the silo because 

 they are too careless. 



Professor Smith : From the looks of the small cornstalks in 

 this country I judge you did not have a very good corn crop 

 last year. 



Member: It was all ears. 



Professor Smith: One thing is certain, Mr. Chairman, all 

 ears are on the corn and not on the people. If it is true that 

 you did not have a good corn crop, if this corn crop in Cerro 

 Gordo county had been put through silos instead of being 

 snapped and you had stock enough to consume it, it would 

 have paid for the silos you will need here for twenty years. I 

 judge from what the statisticians of the West say that you did not 

 have a good corn crop. The gentleman may have been right, it 

 may have been all ears. If you were not going to put it in the 

 silo I would be tempted to feed it from the shock. This snap- 

 ping of corn strikes the Easterner as being awful wasteful, but it 

 has one thing to commend it. The trouble with the pigs I 

 noticed from Chicago to this section is a weak bone. Your 

 steer does not suffer so much but as soon as you commence to 

 feed it to a dairy cow in the winter you will notice a drop in the 

 yield of a cow that gives ten quarts a day. There is more ash 

 in one day's yield of milk than a steer puts on his back in ten 

 days. The average of the corn plant material is distributed in 

 this way, — half of its ash is in the leaves, only seventeen per 

 cent in the ear. You folks have struck something that the 

 scientists are coming to see what you mean by it. At first they 

 said you did not know what you were talking about ; but the 

 farmer generally does not, and we are beginning to see the wis- 

 dom of your proposition on that basis. For what you miss in 

 the ears you have the advantage with the parts of the corn that 

 need the ash the worst. You can succeed in fattening your 

 steers on that snapped corn, but when you begin to feed the 

 dairy cow you must turn to the silo because of the mixture of 

 leaves with the ears, just on this basis of ash alone. 



Mr. Trow : In answer to the question of feeding silage to 

 steers, I notice the Kansas experiment station has issued a bul- 

 letin which shows that every ordinary acre of corn that pro- 



