58 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Prof. Haecker: No; the}^ are always in this covered run- 

 way during botli the day and night. They are only in their 

 stables while they are being fed and milked. If it is warm 

 and pleasant during the day, they are let^out of this runway 

 into the yard for a while. 



Mr. Johnson called to the chair. 



CAEE OF OUR GOLD MINE— THE CORN. 



H. B. CURLER. 



I think that is very nicely put — corn, in my estimation, 

 is the king of crops with us. There is no question that if 

 we will save our corn crop, the corn and the fodder, there 

 is no crop that produces ae. much food per acre. Now, the 

 question is, How can w^e save it? I am not arbitrary about 

 how we do it as long as we do it well. I have had a silo for, 

 I thirtk, twelve years, and have studied the question. In fact, 

 I studied it seven or eight years before 1 reached the point of 

 building a silo. My faith in the silo has had a gradual 

 growth, and I am nearer to be an enthusiast today than I 

 have been at any previous time. 



There are some points with the silo where we have made 

 mistakes. In our early experience the mistake was made of 

 putting the corn in the silo before it had reached its best 

 stage, the proper stage of maturity. I remember talking with 

 a party in New England, who had put his corn into prac- 

 tically a cistern below the ground, and he told me that when 

 he got down into his silo, in feeding out, that there was 

 three feet of this bottom that had been spoiled from that 

 immature corn. Most of us have learned, at our cost, to do 

 better than that now; some of us have learned by other 

 people's experience, fortunately. 



I think some of us have gone to the other extreme, and 

 now allow our corn to become so mature and dry that there is 

 not moisture • enough to make sufficient weight to cause it 



