144 SILAGE CROPS. 



Delaware experiment station six pounds of pea-vine silage 

 fully took the place of one pound of wheat bran, and the 

 product of one acre was found equivalent to two tons of 

 bran. 



Instead of placing only cow peas in the silo, alternate 

 loads of cow peas and corn may be cut and filled into the 

 silo, which will make a very satisfactory mixed silage. A 

 modification of this practice is known as Getty's method, 

 In which corn and cow peas are grown in alternate rows, 

 and harvested together with a corn harvester. Corn for 

 this combination crop is preferably a large Southern vari- 

 ety, drilled in rows 4 Ms feet apart, with stalks 9 to 16 

 inches apart in the row. Whippoorwill peas are planted 

 in drills close to the rows of corn when this is about six 

 inches high, and has been cultivated once. The crop is 

 cut when the corn is beginning to glaze, and when three- 

 fourths of the pea pods are ripe. 



The corn and peas are tied into bundles and these 

 run through the silage cutter. The cut corn and peas are 

 carefully leveled off and trampled down in the silo, and 

 about a foot cover of green corn, straw or cottonseed 

 hulls placed on top of the siloed mass. As in case of all 

 legumes, it is safest to wet the cover thoroughly with at 

 least two gallons of water per square foot of surface. 

 This will seal the siloed mass thoroughly and will pre- 

 vent the air from working in from the surface and spoil- 

 Ing considerable of the silage on top. 



A similar effort of combining several feeds for the 

 silo is found in the so-called Robertson Ensilage Mixture 

 for the silo, named after Prof. Robertson in Canada. This 

 is made up of cut Indian corn, sunflower seed heads, and 

 horse beans in the proportion of 1 acre corn, y 2 acre horse 

 beans, and ^4 acre sunflowers. The principle back of the 

 practice is to furnish a feed richer in protein substances 

 than corn, and thus avoid the purchase of large quantities 

 of expensive protein foods like bran, oil meal, etc. Feed- 

 ing experiments conducted with the Robertson Silage 

 Mixture for cows at several experiment stations have 



