ENSILAGE. 511 



acres, without any hay or straw. I fed three quarts of grain per day. I gave about sixty 

 pounds of ensilage per day, and it was a great mistake; I am now feeding but thirty, and 

 two or three quarts of grain per day. 



I planted my corn in hedges about thirty-two inches apart, and about six inches wide, 

 planting forty or fifty kernels to the running foot, and I got a wonderful growth. My land 

 is not rich. It has been abused for the last hundred years.&quot; 



Mr. 0. B. Potter s statement respecting ensilage is as follows: &quot;I have been feeding out 

 of silos for five years, and I never have any trouble. I commence and cut it down from 

 the top with a hay-knife, and usually cut off enough at one cutting to sustain the animals 

 one day ahead. The cattle eat it up very clean. 



I had one result which may interest farmers. Last spring I was milking fifty-six cows, 

 and sending fifteen cans of milk to the city every day. They were being fed upon ensilage 

 entirely, with two quarts of barley meal. About the middle of June I turned them out 

 where the grass was from six to twelve inches high, with the best of water and shade. The 

 result was that the yield decreased from fifteen cans to eleven, and they did not begin to gain 

 until I put them back on ensilage again in the fall. 



I think a great gain will be found in feeding different kinds of ensilage at the same 

 time. My cattle do not do as well on corn alone as when it is varied, with clover or mixed 

 grass.&quot; 



Mr. Hood, of Dutchess County, New York, says: &quot; My silos, of which I have four, are 

 about sixteen feet square and twenty-one feet deep. We opened one on December 1st, and 

 found it was perfectly green and sweet. &quot;We were then feeding hay, and six quarts of feed 

 to each cow. We stopped the hay and commenced on ensilage, and fed four quarts of feed 

 and twenty-five pounds of ensilage to each cow. The milk gained rapidly, and is still gaining. 

 The top portion of the ensilage is slightly moulded, but so slightly that the cattle did not 

 seem to object to it.&quot; 



Colonel J. W. Wolcott gives the result of his experiments in the dairy as follows : 



&quot; The result of my experience is that the heavier the weight, the better the ensilage 

 will keep. As to the quality of the cream I can say that by feeding fifty pounds of ensilaged 

 maize, and one quart of cotton-seed meal, the increase over the amount when feeding English 

 hay, and six quarts of corn meal averaged twenty-five per cent, in milk, and ten per cent, in 

 butter from the milk, which is a total gain in butter of thirty-seven and a half per cent. 

 The butter brings the highest market price in Boston markets.&quot; 



Mr. E..M. Washburn, of Lenox, Mass., thus gives the result of his experience with 

 ensilage: &quot;Our crops the present season consisted of 192 tons of corn and 91 of millet, 

 counting 40 cubic feet of compressed ensilage one ton. The whole cost of the corn in the 

 silo, aside from manure, $1.33 per ton. The corn was raised in drills 3 feet apart, three 

 stalks to the foot. Variety, Southern white. The whole cost per ton for millet in the silo, 

 aside from fertilizer, was $1.03. The corn was cut by hand in the field, and the millet with 

 a reaper. Wages for men $1.50, for team and man, 4.00 per day. 



In one silo was put 135 tons of corn, in the other 50 of corn and 90 of millet. The silo 

 that was filled with corn has been all fed, and the preservation was found perfect throughout 

 the entire mass. 



Our herd, to which we have fed this ensilage, consists of 40 Holsteins, and have been 

 fed an average of 70 pounds of ensilage, 5 pounds of hay and 3 of grain, to each animal per 

 day. This has fed them 87 days, or 135 tons of ensilage, 8| tons of hay, 5| tons of grain 

 has fed one animal 3,480 days or 116 months, at a cost for ensilage of $178.45, for hay 

 $127.50, for grain $157.50, total $463.45, or 13 cents per day for each animal. Upon 

 this feed my stock have steadily gained in flesh, and the younger ones have made a satis 

 factory growth, the returns in milk have been greater than ever before in the winter. The 



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