CHAPTER XIV 



WINTER GREEN ENSILAGE 



There may be some difficulty in getting the crop 

 consumed before the advent of winter in the northern 

 and eastern districts of these counties, where a large 

 area of winter greens, consisting of giant rape alone, 

 or where the crop consists of a large proportion of 

 this type of winter green, may have been sown, and 

 the crop is well advanced in growth at the beginning 

 of October. In these areas it is often risky to leave a 

 crop of this type to stand over the winter. 



Under such conditions it is a decided advantage to 

 be able to convert the crop into sweet ensilage. There 

 is no difficulty in doing this if there is on the farm 

 either a silage pit or, better still, a circular or Ameri- 

 can stave silo, provided that the material is chaffed 

 when being put into the silo. 



In one or two instances, the writer has attempted 

 to ensile in a silo, rape and similar material in the 

 long state. The experiments have not been successful, 

 the resultant silage, as one of the farm hands described 

 it, being ofsuch a nature that a man could not go near 

 it unless he was equipped with a gas mask. When 

 chaffed with one of the modern chaff ensiling plants, 

 very good results were obtained. 



Some little difficulty, however, was experienced in 

 passing the chaffed stuff through the blower, with 

 which the chaff ensiling plant is equipped. This diffi- 

 culty can be easily got over by chaffing at the same 



