14 BULLETIN 1045, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



apparent higher feeding value of the late-cut silage, but because 

 there is also a greater loss of juices when the plants are harvested at 

 an earlier stage. 



There has been trouble in several cases caused by the loss of juice 

 from sunflower silage. At the field station of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, at Ardmore, S. Dak., 57 tons of sun- 

 flowers were cut about August 25, 1920, and stored in a wooden silo 

 12 feet in diameter. The silo was filled to a depth of 24 feet. Dur- 

 ing the first month it was estimated that several thousand gallons 

 of juice escaped through the cracks and around the doors. This 

 loss of juice was accompanied by a shrinkage of 40 per cent in bulk. 

 Other reports of the loss of juice from sunflower silage have been 

 received. In several of these instances, however, the sunflowers were 

 cut when one-third or less of the plants were in bloom. Such sun- 

 flowers might be expected to produce " sappy " silage. 



At the Huntley, Mont., experiment farm in 1918 the sunflowers 

 were harvested for silage when " on about one-half the plants seed 

 heads were formed, and some were so far advanced that the seeds 

 were in the hard dough stage. The remainder of the plants were 

 in various stages of blooming." The silage made from this crop 

 was not very readily eaten by the cows. This was seemingly due 

 to the fact that much of the silage remained hard and woody in the 

 silo. The report states that apparently the sunflowers were allowed 

 to become too mature before harvesting to make the most palatable 

 silage. 



At the West Virginia station (S, p. 2, 6, and 7) the sunflowers were 

 cut for silage " when the majority of the seeds of the plants were 

 in the light dough stage." No difficulty was experienced either in 

 harvesting or ensiling the sunflowers at this stage of maturity, and 

 none of the silage was refused or not eaten by any cow during the 

 entire test. "After a few days the cows ate the sunflower silage 

 practically as well as corn silage." 



The composition of sunflower plants at different stages of ma- 

 turity is shown by a series of analyses made at the West Virginia 

 Agricultural Experiment Station in 1919 (3, p. 3). Additional 

 work of this nature has also been done by Shaw and Wright (18) 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture. They found that 

 sunflower plants 3 feet high contained 84.87 per cent of moisture; 

 6 feet high, 86.02 per cent; in first flower, 84.09 per cent; with rays 

 ready to fall, 83.9 per cent; with rays dry and partly fallen, 75.58 

 per cent; with rays all fallen, 74.37 per cent; and when the seeds 

 were hard and mature, 69.68 per cent. This decrease in the percent- 

 age of moisture as the plant grows older conforms more nearly with 

 the conditions existing in other plants than do the continuously high 

 moisture percentages found at the West Virginia station. The sun- 



