ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 37 



Dr. Detmers : In Germany, they all pack their hay in good tight barns 

 and their experience is like Mr. Scott's. If they cut their clover and get it 

 into the barn without any rain, it will do perfectly well, if it is perfectly dry, 

 but if you get rain on it, you must cure it before you put it into the barn, or 

 if there is a little moisture, even a littledew,that has not been perfectly evap- 

 orated, it is dangerous, and barns have been set on fire that way. There is 

 no fermentation taking place as in ensilage, which is really nothing but 

 sauer kraut, and I hope that in a State where a bushel of corn is as cheap as 

 it is in this State, that we shall not have to come to that. We can put up 

 clover green, but it must be dry, then we have the very best hay imagina- 

 ble; it comes out a little dark greenish color. 



Dr. Tefft : I think that our farmers dry their hay too much. I think 

 they lose much of the virtue; one time I had hay mowed, and put into the 

 barn within two hours, red top hay. That hay heated so that I could not 

 hold my hand on it, and sweat so that the water run across the barn floor. 

 When I came to feed that hay, I supposed it would be good for nothing, but 

 my stock ate it up cleaner than any they had had in a long time. You can 

 put green hay into a tight barn, that you could not stack at all. 



Mr. Gtjrler : I want to hear from Mr. White about the oats lodging, 

 and what he does for it. 



Mr. White : This question of oats lodging, in our section has become 

 a very serious one. We manure our lands heavily and seed often and sow 

 small grain, with grass seed, and the rich state of our lands makes our oats 

 grow so rank that very often we not only lose our crop of oats, but it smoth- 

 ers out our new seed. I was quite surprised, a few years ago, on visiting one 

 of my neighbors, to find his cattle running through his oats the first of June; 

 the oats eight or ten inches high, and upon inquiry, I found that he was fol- 

 lowing the practice of turning his cattle upon the oats sufficient to eat them 

 down, keeping them back so that they headed out very much shorter. I 

 hardly dared to try the experiment myself for sometime, but I finally ven- 

 tured, and having a piece of oats that was growing /ery rank, I turned in 

 forty or fifty head of them for two or three hours, They went all over it, 

 and cropped it down close. It was so rich, and grew so fast, that in a few 

 days they came up as rank as ever, and I repeated the process. I had a 

 Swede man at work for me, and he said : "Mr. White, you will never get any 

 oats," and I didn't know but what I was overdoing the thing myself, but I 

 was very anxious, not to lose the oats and grass both. I finally got a very 

 fine crop of oats, short enough so that we bound them nicely upon a ''Marsh 

 harvester," and a splendid stand of grass. I have done that ever since to 

 prevent lodging, with good success. 



Q. How much did that put your oat crop off ? 



A. That depends on the season, I would recommend to turn them in, 

 when the oats are about six inches high and then if necessary feed again. 



Q. Did you notice the quality of the milk which was produced from that 

 feed? 



A. Not quality, but I noticed the quantity. 



Q. I think that if you had noticed the cream, you would have observed 

 that it was very abundant. I think that the most abundant cream I ever had 

 was from feed of that kind. 



