107 



and increase the quality of it. I have tried it a dozen years. I 

 have raised corn that I bought in southern Tennessee that had 

 eight ears on a stalk. You can breed corn just as you can 

 cattle or horses, or hogs, and improve it all the time." 



A. B. Hostetter: "The statement has been made here that 

 in the ordinary way we waste one half the produce. Now, we 

 have a great deal of corn in this country, and I would like some 

 of these gentlemen who have had experience in ensilage to tell 

 us whether the value of the fodder which is wasted will pay for 

 the expense of the silo and put the corn into it over and above the 

 expense of ordinary fodder." 



Mr. Periam : " It is simply a question of policy and economy. 

 Where you are feeding dry feed you do not get the full assimi- 

 lation of that food. Of course, with grass in its natural state, 

 you get the full solution of the feed, and that is just where the 

 practical value as between ensilage and dry fodder lies. You 

 have to give a cow that gives a big flow of milk from seventy 

 to one hundred and fifty pounds of water a day on the dry fodder 

 in order to moisten that dry fodder to such a degree that the 

 digestive organs can operate upon it, and the absorbents of the 

 system take it up. The question of the capacity of silo came 

 up, you remember. Now, a silo ten feet square will hold a 

 great deal of stuff. You multiply that ten by ten and you get 

 one hundred square feet, you multiply that again by ten and 

 you have got one thousand cubie feet in that silo. Your ensilage 

 weighs fitty pounds to the cubic foot, and if you divide this one 

 thousand cubic feet by fifty, you get the number of tons in the silo. 

 You get twenty tons in a ten foot silo, and you can easily figure 

 up in that way." 



The convention adjourned to meet at two o'clock p. m. the 

 same day. 



