CROPS ON DAIRY FARMS. 69 



duce acid fermentation are destroyed, and sweet silage is the 

 result ; but this requires nice judgment and most careful 

 superintendence. 



Supposing, however, that every farmer will bestow the 

 necessary care in making silage, the stuff must needs be given 

 sparingly to cows in milk, or the milk may easily become 

 tainted. One of the largest milk firms in this country will not 

 buy milk from farmers who use silage at all. Various crops 

 may be converted into silage, and in wet seasons it is no doubt 

 an advantage to avoid spoiling good grass by trying to make 

 hay of it. But on the other hand it may be pretty safely pre- 

 dicted that a few fine summers would leave a great many silos 

 empty. After all, however, in any sort of a season, silage 

 may be said to be a very tolerable substitute for roots, if not 

 for hay. 



Economical Feeding Stuffs. 



Silage ricks are found to answer tolerably well, yet there is 

 more waste of silage in them than in silos. But they obviate 

 the necessity of going to the expense of building a silo, and are 

 consequently coming more or less into favour amongst farmers 

 who are at all inclined to make silage. It may be taken for 

 granted that nineteen out of twenty farmers who are in the 

 habit of making silage at all, would prefer to make good hay if 

 the weather were suitable ; in these instances, therefore, it is 

 probable that silage ricks will be more popular than silos, if 

 only for the reason that they can be made or not, at will, 

 according to the state of the weather. I have known shrewd 

 and experimenting farmers try silage for a year or two, or for 

 several years, and then drop it again. Others there are, no 

 doubt, who persevere with it, and believe it to be an excellent 

 thing. It will live or die on its merits, and a few more years 

 will probably determine its fate, as a feature, permanent or 

 otherwise, in the agriculture of this country. 



Wherever there is a good stretch of arable land on a dairy 

 fairm we may expect to find, as a rule, oats as the principal if 

 not the only white crop ; because oat straw makes better winter 



