52 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



SOILING AND SUMMER SILAGE. 



BY II. 0. DANIELS OF MIDDLETOWN, CONN. 



The subject assigned to me, " Soiling and summer silage/' 

 is one I believe every dairyman is forced to consider more 

 and more as the seasons come and go, especially when we 

 have the conditions to meet that have prevailed during the 

 past two or three dry seasons. I wonder if you were as 

 badly affected with drought here in the old Bay State this 

 summer as we wore down in the Xutmeg State. Why, it 

 was so dry with us that we could not raise even a full crop 

 of wooden nutmegs, while the cry goes up all over the State 

 of the short hay and corn crop, and men are selling out their 

 dairy herds here and there, claiming that with the high price 

 of hay and grain more money can be made selling their hay 

 than feeding it for milk production. T have no doubt that 

 one can take a pencil and make figures that will substantiate 

 this statement. 



A"et what about the dairyman's bank, — the great interest- 

 bearing, quickly dissolved institution, old Mother Earth, 

 whose cry for help will come when the " golden hoof " of 

 the dairy cow has gone from the farm, and the product of 

 the soil which has robbed her of her fertility is sold in the 

 form of hay, never more to be returned to the fields where 

 once it grew. Do we consider enough the great value of the 

 plant food returned to the soil after the dairy cow has taken 

 her portion? Which would you rather do for a day's work, 

 pitch on a great big bulky load of a ton and a half of hay, 

 and draw it four or five miles to market, with a slow-moving 

 pair of heavy horses, aocompanied by a husky son of Poland 

 or Italy, getting possibly $P>7 for the load, and carrying off 

 at least $6 or $7 worth of plant food from the farm, or hitr>h 

 up the light driving horse and buggy, or the runabout auto- 



