784 



a second or even a third cutting may often be obtained and may be 

 used as green feed, or cut for silage as desired. Maize will yield a 

 heavier crop, if well manured, than a single cutting of sorghum r 

 but if more than one cutting of the latter be secured it may 

 more than make up the difference. In sowing the maize it 

 is always well to put it in in drills and cultivate afterwards, 

 as long as it is possible without injury to the plants. The seeds 

 should be sown close together in the drill so as to have the stalks 

 thin and easily cut and eaten. Treated thus, and well manured, a 

 return of at least twenty tons of green fodder per acre nvght be 

 looked for and if this is made into ensilage, that amount of feeding 

 matter, less a very small percentage of loss, may be looked fo . 

 That means that twenty cows getting between thirty and forty 

 pounds of silage per day could be fed for two months, or giving 

 them fifty-six pounds per clay, it would last them forty days. Six 

 acres properly looked after and well manured could be made to 

 keep twenty cows for a year, and only a small quantity of bran or 

 maize meal would have to be purchased. 



Notwithstanding all that has been written about the use of 

 silage, there are many still who refuse to believe in it. A gentle- 

 man in England some little time ago made the following experi- 

 ment. He had a 26-acre paddock of English rye grass, one half of 

 which he made into hay, the other into silage. Twenty cows in 

 full milk were then taken, and to ten he fed as much of the hay as 

 they would eat. The other ten got as much of the silage as they 

 wanted. The experiment was carried on for some months and the 

 silage was found to last quite three times as long as the hay. Dur- 

 ing the time of the experiment the silage-fed cattle gave much 

 more milk, and kept up the quality, than those fed on hay. Out- 

 side persons were asked to compare the conditions of the cattle 

 and they all gave it in favor of the silage-fed. They were in better 

 condition and their skin softer than the hay-fed animals. The 

 result, therefore, was that the silage-fed beasts gave more milk, were 

 in better condition, and were fed three times as long from 13 acres 

 of land as those that were fed on hay produced from the same area. 

 With some, thinking that ensilage taints the milk, there is still a 

 prejudice against it, and there is no doubt that milk sometimes is 

 tainted by ensilage, but that is not through the cow eating it, but 

 through carelessness on the part of the milkers. 



Sometime since a farmer who had invested a considerable 

 amount of capital in making silos wrote to me saying that he had 

 gone to all this expense on my recommendation, and the result was 

 that he had only lost his time and money and all his crops he 

 had put into the silos, but the creamery he sent his milk to refused 

 to take it, as the milk smelt of the ensilage and spoilt the butter. 

 I wrote telling him it was a matter of impossibility, and in reply 

 I was asked to come and see for myself. I gladly availed myself of 

 the invitation and arrived late at night. Xext morning 1 went out 



