196 HOW TO FEED SILAGE. 



decrease in the flow of milk before turning out to grass, and the 

 cows will be able to keep up well in milk until late in summer, 

 or early in the fall, when they are dried up prior to calving. Silage 

 has a similar effect on the milk secretion as green fodder or 

 pasture, and if made from well-matured corn, is more like these 

 feeds than any other feed the farmer can produce. 



Fig. 54. — Silage Truck Designed for carting silage from the silo 

 to the feeding alley. Smooth rounded corners inside. Saves 

 time, labor and silage. The overhead carrier is also used to 

 some extent for the same purpose. 



The feeding of silage to milch cows has sometimes been ob- 

 jected to when the milk was intended for the manufacture of 

 certain kinds of clieese, or of condensed milk, and there are in- 

 stances where such factories have enjoined their patrons from 

 feeding silage to their cows. When the latter is properly pre- 

 pared and properly fed, there can be no foundation whatever for 

 this injunction; it has been repeatedly demonstrated that Swiss 

 cheese of superior quality can be made from the milk of silage- 

 fed cows, and condensing factories whose patrons are feeding 

 silage have been able to manufacture a superior product. The 

 quality of the silage made during the first dozen years of silo 

 experience in this country was very poor, being sour and often 

 spoilt in large quantities, and, what may have been still more 

 important, it was sometimes fed in an injudicious manner, cattle 

 being made to subsist on this feed as sole roughage. Under these 

 conditions it is only natural that the quality of the milk should 

 be impaired, and that manufacturers preferred to entirely pro- 



