SILAGE -CROPPING 



SOILING 



569 



blowers, while requiring more power, are usually 

 considered the better, because the material is more 

 uniformly distributed in the silo. It is not infre- 

 quent that coarse silage put in with a cutter will 

 vary from fifty to eighty pounds in weight, due to 

 the butts of the corn or the ears being thrown 

 in one place in the silo. This, of course, renders 

 feeding less uniform and is not desirable when 

 feeding experiments are being conducted. Silage 

 cutters should be run with sufficient power to carry 

 the heaviest loads, as insufficient power is a source 

 of much loss in time as well as labor. 



Silage as a factor in farm practice (Sanborn). 



Silage has been derived mainly from corn and 

 has become practically synonymous with the use of 

 this crop. Hollow-stemmed plants are eliminated 

 for reasons given, and other crops are so far in- 

 ferior to corn as sources of silage as to be little 

 used. Clover has been used successfully and often 

 very unsuccessfully and has not come into general 

 use. Other leguminous crops are grown to cut in 

 with corn to give a balanced ration, so called. The 

 wisdom of the practice has not reached a demon- 

 stration, nor is it generally applied. 



Corn is the royal forage crop of the country. It 

 is peerless in its many-sided values. As a machin- 

 ery-grown and tillage crop it is unequaled. In 

 productivity, certainty of a full crop, palatability, 

 digestibility, as a milk- and butter-producer in 

 flavor, color and texture, and in cost per pound of 

 digestible nutrition, it heads the list of forage 

 crops. The silo, especially for the East, utilizes 

 this crop to the fullest advantage. In a measure, 

 it solves the problem of home-grown concentrated 

 feed, as it has been shown by the Vermont and 

 other experiment stations that the ear can be cut 

 into the silo without loss. Husking, driving to the 

 grist-mill, and levy for grinding are all saved, or 

 about one-fourth to one-third of the cost of produ- 

 cing a bushel of corn. As but a little less than 

 two-fifths of the weight of the whole corn plant is 

 in its seed, the importance of this fact is made 

 prominent. 



Any reasonably good farm rotation requires a 

 hot weather tillage crop. The silo has done more to 

 hold this indispensable crop in a prominent position 

 in eastern agriculture than any other one factor. 

 It has been an especially noteworthy factor in 

 increasing the stock, especially milch cows, kept in 

 New England. It invited an increase in area of a 

 very productive plant and added the beneficent in- 

 fluence of more tillage of grass-locked areas. This 

 is tantamount to an increased source of plant-food 

 from the soil. 



Feeding value. 



Early investigations by several state experiment 

 stations give silage about the same digestibility as 

 corn fodder and a loss in the silo exceeding good 

 practice with air-dried fodder. Since the deep silo 

 made tight has supplemented silage fodder cut at 

 the right period into short lengths, the loss in the 

 silo by fermentation has been reduced to 10 per 

 cent or less, and by King and Woll is held to be 



stored at its best at a loss not to exceed 5 per 

 cent. 



Many trials with dry fodder and hay make it cer- 

 tain that 15 per cent is about the minimum loss to 

 be expected by dry storage, while this loss may 

 rise to 20 per cent or more in ordinary practice. 

 Late trials give silage a digestibility slightly ex- 

 ceeding fodder corn, while in milk yield it has 

 become the superior of corn fodder and most dry 

 fodders. In palatability it excels all dry fodders. 



Limitations of silage. 



Farming requires a well-balanced rotation, and 

 corn should not exceed its mathematical share of 

 arable soil, nor should an undue amount of it be 

 fed. It tends in large amounts to undue looseness 

 of the bowels and to an illy balanced ration in its 

 ratio of carbohydrates to protein. Its heavy per- 

 centage of water at times and for some classes of 

 stock, as an exclusive diet in cold weather, for so 

 it has been fed, would give an excess of water to 

 burden the system. Its heavy growth and use con- 

 centrates labor in field and barn in too brief periods. 

 Thirty to thirty-five pounds per day appears to bal- 

 ance all the factors of advantage found in silage. 



The writer dislikes to dogmatize, and begs to 

 state that before him is a collection of the 

 materials of thirty years of experiment station 

 work and many years of personal work, and that 

 opinions necessarily briefly expressed are based very 

 largely on these data. However, he is fully aware 

 that many problems relating to the silo require 

 much more investigation before full ultimate 

 economic truth is reached. 



Literature. 

 See under Maize-growing for the silo, page 414. 



SOILING: Its Philosophy and Practice. Figs. 



806, 807. 

 By F. W. Woll. 



The soiling system consists in feeding farm 

 animals a succession of green fodder crops in the 

 stable during the entire summer period. This 

 system, which has long been practiced by European 

 dairy -jfarmers, became known in this country 

 mainly through two admirable essays on " Soiling 

 of Cattle," by Josiah Quincy, prepared for the 

 Massachusetts and Norfolk Agricultural Societies, 

 and published in the Transactions of these societies 

 for 1820 and 1852, respectively. The advantages 

 of the soiling system enumerated by this writer 

 are, briefly stated, as follows: 



(1) Three times as much feed can be produced 

 per acre of land by this system as when the land 

 is pastured. 



(2) The feed is better utilized by cattle, as there 

 is no waste through treading-down, fouling, and 

 the like. 



(3) The cattle are more comfortable and in 

 better condition when fed green feeds regularly 

 and liberally in the stable than when left to find 

 their own food on the pasture, with the uncer- 

 tainties as to the condition of the pasture, weather 

 and the like. 



