LOSSES IN DRT CURING. 



13 



summary of the main work in this line is given in Prof. WoU's 

 Book on Silage. In the Wisconsin Experiments there was an aver- 

 age loss of 23.8 per cent, in the dry matter (see Glossary) and 

 24.3 per cent, of protein, during four different years, when over 

 36 tons of green fodder had been put up in shocks and carefully 

 weighed and sampled at the beginning and end of the experiment. 

 These shocks had been left out for different lengths of time, under 

 varying conditions of weather, and made from different kinds of 

 corn, so as to present a variety of conditions. The Colorado ex- 

 periments are perhaps the most convincing as to the losses which 

 unavoidably take piece In the curing of Indian com In shocks. 

 The following account is taken from Prof. Cook's report of the 

 experiments. As the conditions described in the investigation will 

 apply to most places on our continent where Indian com is cured 

 for fodder, it will be well for farmers to carefully look into the 

 results of the experiment. 



"It is believed by most farmers that, in the dry climate of 

 Colorado, fodder corn, where cut and shocked in good shape, cures 

 without loss of feeding value, and that the loss of weight that oc- 

 curs is merely due to the drying out of the water. A test of this 

 question was made in the fall of 1895, and the results obtained 

 seemed to indicate that fully a third of the feeding value was lost 

 in the curing. This result was so surprising that the figures were 

 not published, fearing that some error had crept in, though we 

 could not see where there was the possibility of a mistake. 



"In the fall of 1894 the test was repeated on a larger scale. 

 A lot of com was carefully weighed and sampled. It was then 

 divided into three portions; one was spread on the ground in a 

 thin layer, the second part was set up in large shocks, containing 

 about five hundred pounds of green fodder in each, while the rest 

 was shocked in small bundles. After remaining thus for some 

 months, until thoroughly cured, the portions were weighed, 

 sampled and analyzed separately. The table gives the losses that 

 occurred in the curing. 



Table I. Losses in Curing. 



