EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 



615 



and no one is hindered by the others is the most economical. Too many- 

 men in the field for the number at the cutter, or vice versa, and too large 

 a crew for the size of the silage cutter are common sources of loss. Two 

 or three men and teams with loaded wagons waiting their turns to unload, 

 a similar condition in the field where they are waiting to be loaded, 

 or a delay owing to a lack of teams represents a decided loss of valuable 

 time. The factor that controls the size of the crew is the capacity of 

 the silage cutter. 



At farm No. 28 too many men were employed (see Table 3). If there 

 had been only two men instead of four pitching on in the field, three 

 men instead of four with teams hauling, and one man instead of two 

 in the silo, just as much silage could have been cut in the same length 

 of time. The cutter was of medium size — too small for the number of 

 men supposed to be at work. Deducting the wages of the four men and 

 one team that were not needed would lower the cost of filling at this 

 place from 80 cents to 64 cents a ton. 



A small cutter may be used almost as economically as a large one, but 

 most farmers wish to get the silo filling done as quickly as possible and so 

 prefer the larger machines. There was only 2 cents per ton difference 

 between the cost on farms 7 and 8, yet at No. 7 a new machine with an 

 18-inch cylinder was used, while at No. 8 a 13-inch cylinder machine that 

 had been in service eighteen years was still in use. 



SIZE OF LOADS. 



There seems to be an inverse ratio between the size of loads hauled and 

 the cost per ton for filling. It is unfortunate that a record of the total 

 number of loads was not kept for each farm. The importance of this 

 feature was not fully appreciated at the beginning of the study. The 

 table below gives the average size of load of ten farms where such a 

 record was kept. As before stated, the weights given are for cured silage 

 and are not the weights of the green corn as it comes from the field. 



Table 4. — Relation of Size of Loads to Total Cost of Silage. 



The extra large loads hauled at farm No. 2 kept the cost remarkably 

 low. There was only one team with two wagohs hauling. Had smaller 

 loads been drawn, the help of the eight men employed could not have been 

 utilized to good advantage. ■ The men, teams and machinery at farm 

 No. 14, where the cost was 60 cents, were almost identically the same as 

 those at No. 26, where the cost was 77 cents. No record was kept of 

 the total number of loads hauled at these two farms, but the loads at 

 farm No. 26 were much smaller than those at No. 14, owing to a steep 



