The first few days or maybe hours 

 in the barn-drying process are criti- 

 cal. Hay not kept cool at this time 

 will ferment greatly and lose most 

 of its sugar and carotene. 



Losses of valuable constituents in 

 storage, especially of carotene and 

 sugar, are higher, even under rela- 

 tively favorable conditions. If hay 

 has been stored too damp or if the 

 blower does not supply sufficient air 

 to do the job in a reasonable length 

 of time, losses are high. 



Even in ordinary storage when 

 drying has been completed in the 

 field, losses are inevitable under 

 present day conditions. 



First Cutting for Silage 



Because no methods of hay stor- 

 age have as yet been developed on 

 a practical scale, farmers would do 

 well to look into the possibilities of 

 storing a maximum tonnage of their 

 first cutting of grass as silage. Such 

 a procedure has several advantages. 



1. Losses of valuable nutrients 

 are kept at a minimum in well-made 

 silage. 



2. Grass for silage is removed 

 from the field almost as soon as cut, 

 allowing growth of the second crop 

 to besin sooner. This assures more 



tonnage of second cutting and the 

 possibility of a third cutting, es- 

 pecially with a crop such as alfalfa. 



3. If some dry hay is desired to 

 feed along with the first crop silage, 

 the weather is usually much better 

 for haymaking when the second crop 

 is ready than it is for the first crop. 



4. Second and third cuttings of 

 any hay crop are much more palat- 

 able and nutritious than the first 

 cutting. The coarse, rank growth 

 of the first cutting, especially if the 

 crop has been well fertilized, makes 

 much better silage than hay. 



Trench Silo Good Substitute 



For those farmers who do not 

 have silo capacity enough for such 

 a system of storage or who do not 

 have a silo at all, the trench silo is 

 being successfully used in this state. 



If a considerable acreage of first 

 cutting is still left to be made into 

 hay, the process may be speeded up 

 by using a barn drier. Both en- 

 siling and barn drying make it pos- 

 sible to harvest all the first crop of 

 hay by the end of June regardless of 

 the weather, with the further ad- 

 vantage that a minimum of over- 

 ripe, fibrous, unpalatable hay will 

 be left to be discarded. 



The trench silo on the left, built in 1944, is the first of the 160 trench silos in the state. 

 On the right, a tractor helps to pack down silage in a recently constructed trench silo. 

 A removable aluminum roof will be used as a cover. Photos by Ralph W. Donaldson. 



