232 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Two of your speakers this afternoon told you they were very glad 
to be here. I am kind of sorry, I have accepted this invitation to talk 
to a lot of men who know more than I do and I feel like the Irishman. 
One time when there had heen a lot of rain he went down to the river 
and fell in. He floated down the stream a little way and caught hold 
of a branch, and when the waves came he went up and down with the 
branch. Finally he began to get tired and he said: "Begorry, if I 
hang on I'll drown and if I let loose I'll drown. I wish the darn thing 
would break." 
In talking of silage we could only take it up as cheaper production. 
Farmers can sell farm products at market prices. It is a little hard 
to increase the market price. The thing to do is to increase the cost of 
producing. Every man who produces seven cent pork and sells it at 
Chicago for five cents would appreciate the work of any man who 
would tell them how to produce it at four cents and sell it at five. 
I think it can be done. Those who produce beef at six cents and sell 
it at five cents can't find the profit, but I know it can be produced at four 
cents if they find the method. 
In treating this subject I will have to treat it in a little broader 
sense. It will be hard for me to confine myself to silage. All who grow 
hogs practically grow other stock that are considered of as much value 
as the hog crop. Silage for hogs has a greater value as a succulent 
crop. The food value of any plant or vegetable is in the moisture it 
contains. Take the corn stalk. The actual food value of that is held 
in solution and when we let that moisture pass off into the air that 
is the reason we don't get better results. You will shock up probably 
twelve tons of corn on an Iowa farm in September and when January 
comes you have three tons left and the nine tons that have evaorated 
is acually he food value and you have allowed it to evaporate and you 
have practically nothing left but the shell, the wood frame. If you will 
put it in the silo in September you have practically canned it, and you 
have the nutrition, the food value. You have the pith of the stalk and 
you have it canned and so you can get it to use for winter feed. 
The main object in growing any unborn animal is to grow muscle. 
When a man says he bought a sow and fed it so that the pigs were so 
large they could not be farrowed, he ought to know that that could be 
avoided by feeding a vegetable ration. By feeding that you grow muscle. 
The time to grow bone and harden the bone is after the animal is born. 
Another thing is that it is a great deal cheaper. Corn stalk is certainly 
the cheap thing on our Iowa farms today for wintering brood sows or 
young cattle. If you put a corn crop into a silo, the stalks are worth 
more for feed than the ears. I was born in Iowa on a farm and I have 
put in all the years of my life growing corn for the ears. We have been 
wasting the most valuable part of our crop, the stalk. The great value 
of corn silage as a hog ration is its exreme cheapness. We have been in 
the dairy business but have been growing some hogs every year. We 
winter our sows practically on corn silage. You can winter a sow on 
corn silage if you will give her a little oil meal at about a cent and a 
quarter a day and there will be no danger of giving her too much corn. 
Corn has caused us a great deal of trouble from the excessive use of it. 
