ENSILAGE FOR POULTRY. 113 



readily. As ensilage and corn-meal fatten cattle, so with poultry 

 they lay on fat very readily. 



Experiments tried prove that poultry fed on ensilage, with a suffi- 

 cient quantity of grain, will do better in every particular than when 

 fed in the old way upon grains, at one-fourth the cost, or at a saving 

 of about seventy-five per cent. One hundred fowls, take them as 

 they run, large and small, will cost, to feed them one year, about one 

 hundred dollars. To feed the same on ensilage and the required 

 qiuintlty of grain would cost not to exceed twenty-five dollars. Ensi- 

 lage alone is self-sustaining : the poultry will do well and lay well. 

 To feed on ensilage alone would cost about fourteen dollars ; and to 

 add to this shorts, corn-meal, buckwheat mixed with the ensilage, 

 occasionally scraps, plenty of gravel, ashes, etc., they will do better 

 than by any known way of feeding. One hundred fowls should pro- 

 duce, at a low estimate, eight hundred and thirty-three dozen eggs 

 in one year, besides laying eggs to set about thirty hens. These 

 eight hundred and thirty-three dozen eggs at twenty cents per dozen 

 would equal $166.60, and, by fair success, should raise a hundred 

 and fifty chickens. The reason I discuss this subject, poultry, is to 

 show that hundreds of mechanics, laborers, etc., who are owners of 

 a small house, with an acre or two of land, by properly preparing an 

 acre of land, and planting it to corn for ensilage, can raise twenty- 

 five tons to the acre ; average cost would be about two dollars per 

 ton in the silo ; can build a small silo, not to cost over twenty-five 

 to forty dollars, and less than that if they can do the work them- 

 selves ; fill this silo with the ensilage. You can keep a cow the year 

 round on ten to twelve tons of ensilage, or, if fed with some hay or 

 grain, less ensilage. With the balance of the twenty-five tons you 

 can keep from a hundred and fifty to two hundred fowls. Turkeys, 

 geese, and ducks are greedy for ensilage. 



Practical experiments prove these results ; and, for a small invest- 

 ment, I know of no investment that will surely bring such good 

 results. 



