ROUGHAGE PRODUCTION IN NEW HAMPSHIRE 



An Economic Study 

 By M. F. Abell 



A sufficient and suitable supply of roughage to meet the demands 

 of the dairy herd on each farm is fundamental to the dairy industry 

 of the State. The raising of this roughage is an integral part of the 

 dairy enterprise. It therefore involves the whole farm organization 

 and makes necessary the study of the problems as to what forage crops 

 to raise, and the methods used for their economic production and 

 handling. 



SOURCE OF MATERIAL 



The material for this study was obtained by personal survey on 81 

 farms for the crop year 1928 and on 247 for 1929, a total of 328 farms, 

 distributed throughout the State. Of these farms, 281 grew silage 

 corn. Some of the pertinent facts on these farms are given in Table 1. 

 It was not the intent to obtain simple enterprise costs of production for 

 hay and for silage except as incidental to the whole question of what 

 roughage to grow and how. Since some of the costs such as land use, 

 building use, are common to all farms and can be varied only with dif- 

 ficulty, they were omitted from the analysis. 



Those costs which can be modified by changes in practices or meth- 

 ods are extremely important and have been stressed. Some of these 

 methods, however, involve so many changes, reaching through the type 

 and amount of equipment even to harnesses, as well as to type of stor- 

 age space that they are difficult to carry out especially on some farms. 



Table I. Number- of farms, areas and amount of roughage with numbers of 

 stock on the 328 farins included in the survey of which 281 gretv silage. 



I. WHAT ROUGHAGE SHOULD BE GROWN? 



Silage: 



The first point of attack in solving the question of what roughage 

 to grow appeared to be whether or not to raise silage. There has been 

 a marked tendency for many dairymen to give up silage production even 

 where silos are present. It is felt, however, that this tendency was 

 caused partly by the cost of getting corn into the silo and partly by the 

 liigh milk prices of a few years ago and the consequent possibility of 



