36 SILAGE IN BEEF PRODUCTION. 



and the steer will eat about fifty pounds a day, which con- 

 tains ten pounds of corn; and he is getting it in a form 

 that he digests and utilizes every pound. If you add to 

 that two to five pounds of cottonseed meal, all our infor- 

 mation upon that matter is that it has a feeding value of 

 about two and one-half times shelled corn; so that if you 

 give a steer five pounds of cottonseed meal, he is getting 

 an equivalent of ten pounds or more of corn, in addition 

 to the ten pounds of actual corn fed in the ensilage. If he 

 digests and utilizes every pound of the twenty pounds of 

 corn, either in the form of cottonseed meal or shelled 

 corn, he will do well, if he has all the good roughage he 

 wants. In addition to that, this ensilage puts him in the 

 shape that he is when he is on grass. It is a succulent, 

 cooling food, that keeps his hair in the same condition 

 as when he is on grass, and it finishes him up evenly. Our 

 experience has been that they finish up more uniformly 

 on the ensilage than on dry feed. These gains, as you can 

 see, if they are made as rapidly on the ensilage, hay, and 

 cottonseed meal as they can be made in any other way, 

 must be made much more economically, because you are 

 utilizing there the stalk and the leaves and the husks of 

 the corn plant, which, as I have said, counting the corn 

 worth 40 cents a bushel, and fifty bushels to the acre, is 

 worth two-fifths as much as the ears; so you are feeding 

 about $12 or $13 worth that you are wasting in the ordi- 

 nary way of feeding. 



"Briefly, therefore, it is our experience that the feed- 

 ing of ensilage to cattle is valuable. It has long been recog- 

 nized as an indispensable in the dairy, and I could never 

 understand why, if it was good to put fat in the milk pail, 

 it would not be good to put fat on the back. There is es- 

 sentially no difference in the process that takes place in 

 the digestive tract." 



Speaking of the feeding value of corn when put in the 

 silo, Mr. Jones continues: 



"The putting of the corn in the silo is not going to in- 

 crease the feeding value of it a particle, but it will render 

 the grains more digestible. The food in a large silo is 

 always so hot that you can't hold your hand in it, through 

 the process of fermentation; and it therefore puts the 

 grain in condition so that it is more easily and completely 

 digested. But with a practical feeder of cattle that is not 

 a very material thing. It does not matter if the cattle 

 do waste a great deal of the corn; he has the hogs to 



