252 Feeds and Feeding. 



beets or silage, yield somewhat better returns for the dry matter in 

 the silage. The difference in favor of the dry matter of silage 

 in these six trials is three per cent. 



395. Relative cost of beets and silage. Armsby, of the Penn- 

 sylvania Station, l estimates the cost of one acre of corn placed 

 in the silo at $21.12, while to grow and house an acre of beets 

 costs $56. 70. 



At the Ohio Station, 2 Thorne reports that an acre of beets, 

 harvesting 15f tons and containing 3,000 pounds of dry matter, 

 cost as much as an acre of corn yielding 57 bushels of grain and 

 containing 6,000 pounds of dry matter. The great disadvantage 

 of roots in competition with corn silage is here made apparent. 

 (550, 765) 



396. Removing the ears from silage corn previous to ensilage. 

 About the year 1890 the agricultural press contained favorable 

 notices of a system of silage making, which in brief is as fol- 

 lows: The ripening ears of corn are removed from the stalks 

 and cured on the barn floor or elsewhere under cover. The corn 

 stalks freed from the ears are then run through the feed- cutter 

 and preserved as silage. At feeding time a part of the dry ear 

 corn reduced to meal is fed to cattle with the silage. It was 

 claimed that this was an economical practice. Woll summarizes 

 the results at the Wisconsin Station, 3 where silage from equal 

 areas of land was used, thus: 



33,750 pounds of silage, with ears, fed in addition to hay and grain (the 

 feed containing 17,127.5 pounds of dry matter in all), produced 11,835 

 pounds of milk. 



27,571 pounds of silage with ears picked off, plus 4,341 pounds of dry 

 ear corn, in addition to hay and grain as before (the feed containing 

 16,491.7 pounds of dry matter in all), produced 11,423 pounds of milk. 



Hills, of the Vermont Station, 4 reports that an acre of green 

 corn fodder, including ears, 'reduced to silage, was equal in feed- 

 ing value to 1.26 acres of silage from stalks stripped of their 

 ears, fed with the meal made by grinding the dry ear corn which 



1 Bui. 26. 



2 Kept. 1893. 



8 Repts. 1891, 1892. 

 * Kept. 1892. 



