CHAPTER I. 



ADVANTAGES OF THE SILO. 



The silo enables us to preserve a larger quantity of the food 

 materials of the original fodder for the feeding of farm animals 

 than is possible by any other system of preservation now known. 

 Pasture grass is the ideal feed for live stock, but it is not avail- 

 able more than a few months in the year. The same holds true 

 with all soiling crops or tame grasses as well. When made into 

 hay the grasses and other green crops lose some of the food ma- 

 terials contained therein, both on account of unavoidable losses 

 of leaves and other tender parts, and on account of fermentations 

 which take place while the plants are drying out. 



In cases of Indian corn the losses from the latter source are 

 considerable, owing to the coarse stalks of the plant and the 

 large numbers of air-cells in the pith of these. Under the best 

 of conditions cured fodder corn will lose at least ten per cent, of 

 its food value when cured in shocks; such a low loss can only 

 be obtained when the shocks are cared for under cover, or out in 

 the field under ideal weather conditions: In ordinary farm prac- 

 tice the loss in nutritive value will approach twenty- five per cent., 

 and will even exceed this figure unless special precautions are 

 taken in handling the fodder, and it is not left exposed to all 

 kinds of weather in shocks in the field through the whole winter. 

 These figures may seem surprisingly large to many farmers who 

 have left fodder out all winter long, and find the corn inside the 

 shock bright and green, almost as it was when put up. But ap- 

 pearances are deceitful; if the shocks had been weighed as they 

 were put up, and again in the late winter, another story would be 

 told, and it would be found that the shocks only weighed any- 

 where from a third to a half as much as when they were cured 

 and ready to be put in the barn late in the fall; if chemical 

 analysis of the corn in the shocks were made late in the fall, and 

 when taken down, it would be seen that the decrease in weight 

 was not caused by evaporation of water from the fodder, but by 

 waste of food materials contained therein from fermentations, 

 or action of enzymes. (See Glossary.) 



The correctness of the figures given above has been abund- 

 antly proved by careful experiments conducted at a number of 

 different experiment stations, notably the Wisconsin, New Jersey, 

 Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Colorado experiment stations. A 



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