PAINTING THE SILO LINING. 75 



bored through the siding and sheeting and covered with 

 a piece of wire netting to keep out mice and rats. At the 

 top of the silo on the inside, the lining is only covered to 

 within two inches of the plate and this space is covered 

 with wire netting to prevent silage from being thrown 

 over when filling. This arrangement permits dry air from 

 outside to enter at the bottom between each pair of studs 

 and to pass up and into the silo, thus keeping the lining 

 and studding dry and at the same time drying the under 

 side of the roof and the inside of the lining as fast as 

 exposed. In those, cases where the sill is made of 2x4's 

 cut in 2-foot lengths there will be space enough left be- 

 tween the curved edge of the siding and sheeting and the 

 sill for air to enter so that no holes need be bored as de- 

 scribed above and represented in Fig. 3. The openings 

 at the plate should always be provided and the silo should 

 have some sort of ventilator in the roof. This ventilator 

 may take the form of a cupola to serve for an ornament 

 as well, or it may be a simple galvanized iron pipe 12 to 

 24 inches in diameter, rising a foot or two through the 

 peak of the roof. 



Painting the Silo Lining. 



It is impossible to so paint a wood lining that it will 

 not become wholly or partly saturated with the silage 

 juices. This being true, when the lining is again exposed 

 when feeding the silage out, the paint greatly retards the 

 drying of the wood work and the result is decay sets in, 

 favored by prolonged dampness. For this reason it is 

 best to leave a wood lining naked or to use some antiseptic 

 which does not form a water-proof coat. 



The cost of such a silo as that described in the fore- 

 going pages, is estimated by Prof. King at about 12 

 cents per square foot of outside surface, when the lining 

 consists of two layers of half-inch split fencing, with a 

 8-ply Giant P. & B. paper between, and with one layer of 

 split fencing outside, covered with rabbetted house siding. 



