FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 61. 



A : The base of my feed is silage. 



O: Don't you feed something else? 



A: Sure I do. The man that thinks that ensilage alone 

 is a good feed is mistaken. Ensilage and alfalfa hay as prac- 

 tically a balanced ration for a dairy cow may be right, but there 

 is not a high producing cow in the state of Illinois or Wiscon- 

 sin that can eat enough of it and do her best, because they are 

 both bulky, and if she is a first-class cow, she has to work too 

 hard to reduce that to milk and butterfat. You have got to feed 

 that cow some concentrates. The silos are the greatest buildings 

 on the farm, but you men who have good cows — if you have 

 poor cows, don't feed them anything but clover hay and silage, 

 — but a good cow you can't feed her too good grain. Last week 

 we were feeding ensilage and from 3 to 5 pounds of gluten feed 

 and a very little bit of oil meal and some bran mixed with the 

 ensilage. This week we are feeding corn and oats ground to- 

 gether, 400 pounds of the corn and 100 pounds of oats by weight, 

 two-thirds corn and one-third oats and 100 pounds of cotton- 

 seed meal, and we are not feeding quite as much of that as we 

 are of gluten feed. We never feed, where we can help it, any 

 of these concentrated feeds of any kind as such, we always mix 

 it with the ensilage. There are plenty of other men here that 

 are perhaps better feeders than I am. 



Q : Do you mix your feed that way and let it stand ? 



A : No, ensilage is fermented feed anyway. I simply put 

 it in the feed box together and if it is not too cold weather, wQ 

 give it a twist with our hands so that the cow cannot get all the 

 ground feed first. 



Q : Did you ever feed alfalfa ensilage ? 



A : I ran two loads of it into my silo, but I have not fed 

 enough of it to give you any reliable data. 



Q: How about ground alfalfa and sugar? 



