THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 235 



fodder as grass is to hay. It is through silage that we get the equivalent 

 of grass in winter. The succulence of silage or roots are as essential to 

 economical bovine assimilation as fruit and vegetables are to the health 

 fulness of mankind. 



THE SILO AN ECONOMICAL FACTOR IN BEEF PRODUCTION. 



The Breeders' Gazette. 

 For a long time The Gazette has steadily urged upon its beef-pro- 

 ducing readers the wisdom of considering the silo as a factor in their 

 business. Communications appearing from time to time show that oui 

 wire grass sloughs, as the chemist finds that peat contains a large per 

 the matter is far less than it should be. The common practice of fattening 

 steers in the West must rapidly change from the present time forward 

 because of the changed conditions which confront our stockmen. The day 

 of cheap corn seems forever past. The enormous use of corn for other 

 purposes than feeding farm animals and the expanding foreign demand 

 for this grain have extended markets hitherto of small capacity. The 

 time has gone by when the stockman can give his steers what roughage 

 they need in tne shape of cornstalks or hay and then supply each animal 

 with a half-bushel of ear corn to crunch at its leisure. Twenty-eight 

 pounds of shelled corn now represents too much cash to constitute the 

 daily allowance of the fattening steer if a smaller amount of this grain 

 or some other combination less costly will produce the same result. 



The silo offers the greatest adjunct to the more economical feeding of 

 steers now available to stockmen generally. It does this through the stor- 

 age of the whole plant — ears, stalks and leaves — in a direct, economical 

 and most palatable form. With the silo and the corn harvester at his 

 command the corn-growing steer feeder will harvest his corn crop just 

 before frost comes in the fall, running the harvested bundles of corn 

 forage ears and all through the feed cutter and on into the silo. The 

 mass of finely-cut material carefully compacted undergoes fermentation 

 which decreases its feeding value somewhat, but leaves the material — 

 ears, cobs, stalks and leaves — all in a most succulent toothsome form for 

 the cattle. Fed as silage not a pound of the corn plant need be wasted, 

 the coarser stalks all being consumed as well as the ears. Under this 

 system the fields are cleared of their stalks and there is no husking of the 

 corn as heretofore. The additional labor of shelling the corn and grind- 

 ing it, as practiced on many farms, is no longer necessary for that part of 

 the corn crop placed in the silo. In winter time a bushel of the silage 

 twice a day furnishes the steer all of the roughage he requires during the 

 earlier stages or fattening together with the needed portion of grain, un- 

 less there be fed a little bran or some such material additional. As the 

 fattening period progresses the steer needs less roughage and more grain. 

 To furnish this corn purchased for the purpose or raised on the farm, 



