SILAGE -CROPPING 



SILAGE -CROPPING 



567 



lerica, Mass., constructed a concrete silo on his 

 farm. By gatherings of the press and of public men 

 at the opening of his silo, and by free writing on 

 the subject of silage, coupled with extravagant 

 praise of the material, he created a sudden and 

 wide interest in the new method of crop storage. 

 In a decade the silo came into wider use and under- 

 went a more radical change than had occurred in 

 the century or centuries of previous use. 



Stone loaded on plank, earth, bags of sand, screw 

 pressure, and other methods of weighting, quickly 

 followed each other, until it dawned on observers 

 that the immense weight of the green forage sup- 

 plied adequate pressure for all but the very top layer. 

 The omission of weighting was followed by covering 

 with straw or poor hay as a method of retaining in 

 part the moisture of the surface of the silage, and by 

 its quick decay of excluding the free access of air. 

 Later this covering was generally omitted, as it 

 involved cost and loss of its own substance, which 

 was found to equal the loss accruing to the uncov- 

 ered silage. It is now found that this loss may be 

 greatly reduced by spraying the top of the silage 

 with water on conclusion of the filling or by fre- 

 quent treading of the surface for a period after 

 cutting ceases. The last and best practice is the 

 immediate and daily feeding of the surface material, 

 a method in harmonious keeping with the essential 

 requirements of farm stock at the period following 

 the close of corn harvest when out-of-door feeding 

 material is in deficiency. 



The costly stone silo, invariably accompanied by 

 decay of silage around the entire inside surface, 

 soon gave way to the concrete silo, and this to the 

 cheaper and more perfect, though less durable 



wooden silo. These 

 at first were made 

 in the corners of 

 the barns, double- 

 boarded with 

 matched boards, 

 lined between 

 with suitable 

 paper. The cheap- 

 ened silo proved 

 more effective 

 than the parent 

 ones, and cheap- 

 ening still further 

 became a growing 

 customuntil many 

 silos were con- 

 structed with a 

 single thickness 

 of unmatched 

 boards. As they 

 were made mainly 

 of the porous 

 white pine lum- 

 ber in the East, 

 it was soon found that this material expanded 

 quickly and closed the cracks, thus keeping the 

 material (except in the upper few feet of the silage, 

 where pressure was light and the expansion of the 

 lining slow) up to the very edge of the boarding, in 



good, fairly palatable condition. Indeed, during the 

 progress of ensiling it has been found that anything 

 that secures rigidity to the sides of the silage will 

 insure the keeping of the mass if depth enough to 

 give pressure and exclusion of air is secured. So it 



Fig. 804. Small model silo of the oc- 

 tagonal fonn of silo, showing 

 method of construction. 



Fig. 805. Round silo attached to dairy bam, as commonly 

 seen in dairying sections. 



has occurred that silage has been made after the 

 stack fashion. 



It is now understood by all that the supreme end 

 to be secured in ensiling is the exclusion of air. 

 The more complete this exclusion, the more perfectly 

 is the material kept. For this reason there has been 

 a constant tendency to increase the height of silos 

 to secure pressure that not only should expel air, 

 but exclude it from entrance. The more recent 

 critical research has shown that the more perfect 

 the silo or the more perfect the exclusion of the 

 air, the less the loss of the organic material of the 

 fodder ensiled. 



The demonstrated economy of material in the 

 better class of silos is now producing a counter 

 current in silo construction, moving toward a class 

 of silos that conserve best the material committed 

 to them. The round silo, presenting the least sur- 

 face per ton capacity, and therefore also requiring 

 the least material for construction, is at present 

 the popular form of structure. (Fig. 805.) It is made 

 of many forms and is covered in many fashions. The 

 stave silos made of 2 x 4 and held by iron hoops 

 was the parent form. It was made of matched two- 

 inch pine, of stuff merely beveled, and again of 

 unbeveled material. This form has the demerit of 

 shrinking when dry, and of occasionally collapsing 

 or blowing over. It requires biennial screwing up 

 of nuts and unscrewing wlien empty and when being 

 filled. This has turned many to the round silo made 

 by bending half-inch stuff to studding set on a 'cir- 

 cular foundation. These are single-lined of matched 

 stuff, or double-lined with paper between. A very 

 popular modification of this construction in con- 



