Silage also can be fed outside in 

 October and April. In this case the 

 silo room can be remodelled so that a 

 silo cart on wheels or suspended from 

 a carrier track can be filled directly 

 from the silo and pushed through an 

 outside door to feed bunks in the 

 yard (Fig. 53). Or an operator can 

 construct a silo in the open yard and 

 build facilities so that he can push 

 the cart in one direction from the silo 

 to feed the cows and in the other to 

 feed young stock (Fig. 54). The silo 

 cart can operate on flanged wheels 

 using the feed bunk sides as a track. 

 A double trap door arrangement at 

 the bottom of the cart distributes the 

 silage at the control of the operator 

 as he pushes the cart along on top 

 of the feed bunks. This practice has 

 been in use in the cattle feeding areas 

 for many years. Suppose a farmer 

 planned to feed out 40 tons of silage 

 to his cows and young stock during 

 August to supplement pastui'e, and 

 also to feed out 40 tons in October 

 and 40 tons in April. A small 80- 

 ton silo 14 by 30 feet could be built 

 in the open yard. This could be filled 

 with grass silage in early summer and 

 half of it fed out in August. It could 

 then be refilled with corn silage in 

 early September. Half of it could be 

 fed out in October and the other half 

 in April. 



A successful design of silos for 

 self-feeding has been reported by the 

 New Jersey Experiment Station.* 

 This may prove to be a practical way 

 for feeding silage to dairy cows in the 

 spring and fall months. These silos 

 are not completely automatic but 

 only a few minutes would be required 

 occasionally in regulating the feeding 



CHOPPED HAY 



* Mimeograph Report : Progress Report on 

 the Development of Structures Designed for 

 the Se'f -feeding of Hay and Ensilage by C. H. 

 Reed, Department of Agricultural Engineering, 

 College of Agriculture, Rutgers University, 

 The State University of New Jersey. 



Fig. 52. Sketch of an outdoor hay 

 self-feeder. Three of these 

 12 ton self-feeders each in 

 a separate small yard would 

 supply the cows with 12 

 tons in April, 12 tons in the 

 August short pasture season 

 and 12 tons in October. This 

 would involve very little la- 

 bor in feeding. The arrows 

 at the right show the action 

 of the swinging baffle. 



rail. These are still in experimental 

 stage. 



Arrangements made to feed all 

 roughage in self-feeders outside dur- 

 ing April and October would reduce 

 the full winter schedule of chore work 

 to five months or 150 days. 



Fig. 56 describes one chore schedule 

 for April and October. In this sched- 

 ule the second man returns to the 

 barn after breakfast, completing the 

 forenoon chores above. The first man 

 is free to start field work immediately 

 after breakfast and can continue un- 

 til nearly 5:00 p. m. Both men milk 

 morning and afternoon. 



These schedules indicate that two 

 men can take care of 40 cows with 

 considerable leeway in the middle of 

 the day. Observations have been 



Fig. 51. Two summer chore schedules (synthetic). In Schedule B one of 

 the workers does all the evening chore work, permitting the other 

 man to work in the field. 



59 



