204 HOW TO FEED SILAGJ3. 



in bloom, and cut one-half to three-eighths of an inch in length, 

 also one-half ton of sweet corn, and run this through the 

 feed cutter. Put into the barrel a layer of clover, then a layer 

 of corn. Having done this, t^,ke a common building jack-screw 

 and press the silage down as firmly as possible. Then put on this 

 a very light sprinkling of pulverized charcoal, and Keep on putting 

 in clover and corn until you get the barrel as full as will admit of 

 the cover being put back. After your four barrel silos are filled, 

 roll them out beside the barn, and cover them with horse manure, 

 allowing them to remain there thirty days. Then put them away, 

 covering with cut straw or hay. When the cold, chilling winds of 

 December come, open one of these 'poultrymen's silos,' take about 

 twenty pounds for one hundred hens, add equal parts of potatoes, 

 ground oats, and winter rye, place same in a kettle and bring to a 

 boiling state. Feed warm in the morning and the result will be 

 that you will be enabled to market seven or eight dozen eggs per 

 day from one hundred hens through the winter, when eggs bring 

 good returns." 



Additional Testimony as to the Value of Silage. 



Corn silage compared with root crops. Root crops are no 

 grown to any large extent in this country, but occasionally an old- 

 country farmer will grow roots for his stock, because his father 

 did so, and his grandfather and great-grandfather before him. 

 This is what a well-known English writer, H. Henry Rew, says 

 as to the comparative value of roots and silage, from the stand- 

 point of an English farmer: 



"The root crop has, for about a century and a half, formed the 

 keystone of arable farming; yet it is the root crop whose position 

 is most boldly challenged by silage. No doubt roots are expensive 

 say 10 per acre as the cost of producing an ordinary crop of 

 turnips and precarious, as the experience of the winter of 1887-8 

 has once more been notably exemplified in many parts of the 

 country. In a suggestive article in the Farming World Almanac 

 for 1888, Mr. Primrose McConnell discusses the question: 'Are 

 Turnips a Necessary Crop?' and sums up his answer in the follow- 

 ing definite conclusion: 



" 'Everything, in short, is against the use of roots, either as a 



