NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI 233 
It produces too hard and solid and in order to have success at farrowing 
time we must have something that will grow muscle and not bone. 
I am afraid that before I get through you will lose the main point 
of my text like the boy that went to church. His father couldn't go 
and when he got home his father asked him what the text was. He 
said he didn't exactly remember but it was something like "Keep a 
stiff upper lip and you will get your blanket back." The old man couldn't 
understand and asked the minister about his text and the minister re- 
plied that it was "Be of good cheer and a Comforter will come." So, I 
say I am afraid that you will lose the text before I get through. When 
you talk to a lot of people that know more than you do you don't get 
along very well. When I talk to cattle feeders I talk silage as a sheep 
feed, and when I talk to sheep feeders I talk silage as a hog feed, but I 
am always true to silage. But your committee has got me down to 
silage as a hog ration. This is the first talk I have given on this subject 
and silage is not practical for a man that is feeding hogs alone, but 
when a man is growing beef he can produce it for two cents less by 
feeding silage than dry feed and the cattle will come out in the same 
strong, growthy condition as in the fall. Instead of starting your young 
stuff in on hay and having them a hundred pounds lighter in the spring 
you can have them a hundred pounds heavier in the spring than in the 
fall. 
When you feed cattle with silage with something like oil meal you 
will have to feed your hogs out of the same silage because your hogs 
will not live after cattle, A steer eats corn to grow muscle. If you 
feed your steer out of a silo you will have practically all the corn a 
steer needs and another feed as valuable as blue grass and then with 
protein feed you can produce two cents a pound less. You can grow 
young stuff through the winter on this ration and it is much cheaper than 
any thing else. 
This winter we wintered a carload of black cattle on silage and put 
them on grass this spring in the same growthy condition as they w^ere 
in last fall and they have been growling every day on the pasture and 
are strong, thrifty fellows. My opinion is this, that the only reason 
stock does not starve to death on timothy hay is because the winter is 
not long enough. My cattle have done real well on timothy hay with some 
corn with it, but my wife has some chickens that will do real well on 
sawdust if there is some feed with it. Timothy hay will not keep an 
animal alive in this country for seven months in the winter. Keeping 
an animal alive is keeping some weight and keeping it in good condition. 
The tendency of all young animals is to get heavier every day. When it 
begins to get lighter, the plain way is that it is starving to death. It is 
easy to say that it is not doing well, but a man knows that it is 
starving to death when it gets thinner and you have only to continue 
for a few months and you will have his hide on the fence. 
It is the same with hogs. In the winter in my part of the state 
we have nothing else to winter hogs on except corn. Some men provide 
clover hay. I have known hogs on my father's farm to go all through 
the winter with nothing but corn unless they got out and got other feed. 
Siiage will keep them growthy and strong and there is all the corn 
