THE BUILDING OF SILOS. 25 



CHAPTER V. 



THE BUILDING OF SILOS OF DIFFERENT SIZES AND FORMS, GIVING 

 THE CAPACITY AND CONTENTS OF SAME. 



SILOS can be built of stone, brick, concrete, wood, or earth. Some 

 have been made by simply excavating the earth, sides and bottom 

 being cemented ; where the earth is compact, it has been successfully 

 used, without any thing being done to the sides and bottom of this 

 earth-pit, or silo. Silos, or pits, are sometimes merely trenches, a few 

 feet in depth and width, into which the corn-fodder is closely packed, 

 and then carried vertically upwards above ground to the height of 

 four or five feet, and carefully covered by heaping dirt over the sides 

 and top to the thickness of eighteen to twenty-four inches. The 

 chief drawback to the use of such pits is their liability to cave in 

 when emptied of ensilage in the spring. One silo is described as a 

 well thirty feet deep, walled up and cemented, and furnished with a 

 windlass and rope for raising the ensilage to the surface. Many 

 build silos parallel to each other, with a common wall between, so 

 that they can be used in succession. Another form is described as 

 an elongated cylinder, arched over the top in the direction of its 

 greatest length, after the manner of a cistern, and with only a nar- 

 row opening left along the crest of this arch, through which the 

 corn-fodder is delivered ; and it is closed by a single covering of 

 earth after the pit is filled. 



Another correspondent states here that he has experimented for a 

 number of years past with brewers' grain, endeavoring to discover 

 the best mode of keeping it. He has tried stone, brick, and ce- 

 mented vaults, barrels, and wooden vats, and found none to compare 

 with pits dug in a clay or other good soil. He is inclined to attrib- 

 ute the superiority of these to the preservative action of the soil 

 itself. 



A very good silo is one built of concrete. It costs but little more 

 to build a good silo than it does a poor one. A well-built silo of 

 good material is the cheapest and safest. Professor E. W. Stewart 

 advocates to build it of water-lime concrete. First, having exca- 

 vated for the silo, dig a trench all around the bottom, and fill in with 



