68 Twenty-First Biennial Eepokt 



CONCRETE SILO CONSTRUCTION. 



The Department of Agriculture has continued its 

 policy inaugurated in 1912 of encouraging the construc- 

 tion of concrete silos throughout the State. The small 

 amount of annual appropriation for demonstration 

 work, namely, five thousand dollars, has been divided 

 among the various lines indicated in this volume, and 

 it has been impossible for the department to purchase 

 anything like the number of forms for the construction 

 of cement silos that could have been used; nor could the 

 force of men be added to, and two men have continued 

 to do the work the department has undertaken. How- 

 ever, we have found by furnishing the forms to the 

 County Demonstration Agents in some of the counties, 

 practically the same results have been obtained as if 

 they had been handled by the State. They have super- 

 vised the work in many instances, after having been in- 

 structed by one of the men employed by the department. 

 In this way fifty or sixty concrete sUos have been erected 

 each year through assistance from this small appropria- 

 tion. 



There has never been reported to this department 

 a single failure of the concrete silo to keep ensilage 

 when our instructions of painting the interior with coal 

 tar paint, and washing the exterior with cement, have 

 been followed. Storms have blown down the buildings 

 adjacent to concrete silos, fires have burned them down, 

 yet each silo constructed under the supervision of the 

 department still stands. In one instance, lightning 

 struck a silo, and tore a hole through a six-inch waJl 

 near the bottom of the structure, and a little cement to 

 fill the aperture was all that was necessary to repair 

 the damage. 



The experimental stage of the Monolithic Silo is 

 passed. It has not been and is not the policy of the de- 

 partment to condemn any material for the erection of 

 silos. Wooden silos, when properly constructed and 

 kept tight, will keep ensilage for twelve or fifteen years 

 equally as well as a concrete one. The cement block, the 

 cement stave, the tile and the metal silo, each is better 



