16 



BULLETIX 1045, U. S. DEPAETMEXT OF AGRICrXTUKE. 



Little trouble will be experienced in cutting sunflowers if the 

 plants are fed into the silage cutter tops first. Smiflower silage 

 packs more easily than corn silage. If harvesting has been de- 

 layed for any reason until the sunflowers are older and somewhat 

 chy it will be necessarj^ to add water along with the silage. With 

 such silage more care is required to tramp it down thoroughly. 

 Sunflowers usually produce an inferior qualitj^ of silage if har- 

 vested later than the blooming stage. 



A word of caution is necessary in regard to the strength of the 

 silo used in storing sunflower silage. Those who have had experi- 

 ence in ensiling sunflowers find that they pack much more closely 



Fig. G. 



-Filling with sunflowers the 200-ton concrete silo on the United Stateji Sheep 

 Experiment Station near Dubois, Idaho. 



in the silo than corn. This close packing, of course, means heavier 

 silage and in large silos results in much greater pressure on the 

 walls of the silo. George M. Rommel, formerly Chief of the Animal 

 Husbandrj^ Division, Bureau of Animal Industry, United States 

 Department of Agriculture, is authority for the statement that a silo 

 con.structed to hold 200 tons of corn silage will hold nearly 300 tons of 

 sunflower silage. 



Eommel says that a new monolithic concrete silo 1-1 feet in 

 diameter and 50 feet high was built with 6-inch walls and the ordi- 

 nary quantity' of metal reinforcement on the United States Sheep 

 Experiment Station near Dubois, Idaho, in 1920. (Fig. 6.) This 

 silo, while it was being filled with sunflowers that fall, began to 

 crack from the pressure when it was little more than half full. Fill- 



