262 FEEDS AND FEEDING 



year all the feed consumed goes for body maintenance, returning nothing 

 to the owner, and serving only to carry the animals over winter and to 

 pasture time, when they once more begin to gain in weight and thereby 

 really increase in value. By the use of corn silage, combined with other 

 cheap roughages, young cattle can be made to gain steadily all winter 

 at small cost, so that with the coming of spring they will not only have 

 increased in weight but are in condition to go on pasture and make 

 the largest possible gains. 



Silage is a valuable succulence for the breeding flock, but must be 

 fed in moderation to ewes before lambing or weak, flabby lambs may 

 result. (884) Good silage may also be used in a limited way with idle 

 horses and those not hard worked in winter, especially brood mares and 

 colts. (510) Spoiled, moldy silage should always be discarded, and 

 special care must be taken to feed no such material to sheep or horses, 

 which are more easily affected thereby than are cattle. 20 (397) Silage 

 which is unduly sour is apt to cause digestive disturbances with sheep. 

 For all animals only as much silage should be supplied as will be 

 cleaned up at each feeding. Care should be taken to remove any 

 waste, for silage spoils in a short time on exposure to the air. Frozen 

 silage must be thawed before feeding. If then given before any decom- 

 position takes place no harm will result from its use. 21 



The amount of silage commonly fed per head daily to the various 

 classes of stock is about as follows : 



Dairy cows, 30 to 50 Ibs. for those in milk, with somewhat less for dry cows; 

 dairy heifers, 12 to 20 Ibs.; beef breeding cows, 30 to 50 Ibs.; fattening 2-year- 

 old steers, 30 to 40 Ibs. at the beginning of the fattening period, the allowance 

 decreasing as they fatten until only 10 to 20 Ibs. is fed; brood mares and idle 

 horses, 10 to 15 Ibs.; breeding ewes, 2 Ibs. (sometimes as much as 3 to 4 Ibs. is 

 safely fed) ; fattening lambs, 1.5 to 3 Ibs. 



On high-priced land and with high prices ruling for purchased con- 

 centrates and for labor, the farmer will find the legumes and Indian 

 corn or the sorghums his best crop allies. With an abundance of corn or 

 sorghum silage and legume hay, the stockman need supply only the 

 minimum of rich concentrates. With this combination of feeds the num- 

 ber of animals the farm will carry is greatly increased, to the great ad- 

 vantage of both land and owner, and the cost of producing meat and 

 milk is cut to the minimum. 



412. Summer silage. In many districts summer droughts frequently 

 injure the pastures, making necessary the supplying of additional feed 

 to maintain satisfactory production with dairy cows and other farm 

 animals. Especially on high-priced land, where intensive agriculture 

 must be followed, it is often desirable to keep more animals than can 

 profitably be maintained entirely on pasture during the summer. Silage 

 will admirably meet both these needs where enough animals are kept 

 to feed off 2 inches or more of silage each day so that the surface will 

 not decay. (420) 



80 HI. Exten. Cir. 38. 21 u. S. Farmers' Bui. 556. 



