CHAPTER XI 



CORN MACHINERY 



Feed and Silage Cutters 



304. Development. It is not an original, neither is it 

 a novel idea, for farmers to cut dry feed for their stock. 

 This has been going on for ages. The first machine for 

 cutting feed was simply a knife for hacking it up. Later 

 the feed was placed in a box, allowing the ends to come 

 over a cutter head; then a knife was drawn down over 

 this head, which acted in the manner of shears. Possibly 

 the next development in feed cutters was to fasten a 

 spiral knife to a shaft in such a manner that the cutting 

 might be done by a continuous rotary motion. Such a 

 cutter was invented by Mr. Salmon of England in about 

 1820, and by a Mr. Eastman in the United States in 1822. 

 Another type of machine which has been developed is 

 one in which the knives are fastened to the spokes of a 

 flywheel, and by which the feed is chopped by being fed 

 into the wheel, the cutting taking place over the end of 

 the feeding board. 



The storage of green and partially cured succulent 

 crops in a silo of some form or other may be traced to the 

 beginning of history, but it has been recently that silos 

 have been made use of in America. In 1882 the United 

 States Department of Agriculture could find only 99 

 farmers in this country who owned silos. A silo may be 

 found on nearly every dairy farm to-day, and it is con- 

 sidered to be almost an essential. The silage cutter is 



