208 HOW TO PEED SILAGE. 



shorts, or other concentrated feeds. The diet of the hog should be 

 largely made up of easily digested grain food; bulky, coarse feeds 

 like silage can only be fed to advantage in small quantities, not to 

 exceed three or four pounds per head per day. As in case of breed- 

 ing ewes, silage will give good results when fed with care to 

 brood sows, keeping the system in order, and producing a good 

 flow of milk. 



Silage for Poultry. 



But little experience is at hand as to the use of silage as a poul- 

 try food; some farmers, however, are feeding a little silage to their 

 poultry with good success. Only small quantities should, of course, 

 be fed, and it is beneficial as a stimulant and a regulator, as much 

 as food. A poultry raiser writes as follows In Orange Judd Farmer, 

 concerning his experience in making and feeding silage to fowls. 

 Devices similar to that here described have repeatedly been ex- 

 plained in the agricultural press: "Clover and corn silage is one 

 of the best winter foods for poultry raisers. Let me tell you how 

 to build four silos for $1. Buy four coal-oil barrels at the drug 

 store, burn them out on the inside, and take the heads out. Go to 

 the clover field when the second crop of the small June clover is 

 in bloom, and cut one-half to three-eighths of an inch in length, 

 also one-half ton of sweet com, and run this through the feed 

 cutter. Put into the barrel a layer of clover, then a layer of corn. 

 Having done this, take a common building jack-screw and press 

 the silage down as firmly as possible. Then put on this a very light 

 sprinkling , of pulverized charcoal, and keep on putting in clover 

 and corn until you get the barrel as full as will admit of the cover 

 being put back. After your four barrel silos are filled, roll them 

 out beside the barn, and cover them with horse manure, allowing 

 them to remain there thirty days. Then put them away, covering 

 with cut straw or hay. When the cold, chilling winds of December 

 come, open one of these 'poultrymen's silos,' take about twenty 

 pounds for one hundred hens, add equal parts of potatoes, ground 

 oats, and winter rye, place same in a kettle and bring to a boiling 

 state. Feed warm in the morning and the result will be that you 

 will be enabled to market seven or eight dozen eggs per day from 

 one hundred hens through the winter, when eggs bring good 

 returns." 



