ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. IIQ 



number of his cattle by just running into his barn a layer of 

 corn and then a layer of straw, and that it kept well. Mr. 

 Gurler told me a week or two ago that he should try the ex- 

 periment. He seemed to think it would work well." 



The President: "Thirty years ago my father used to do 

 that same thing. Well do I remember how he made us boys 

 pitch the heavy green clover in, and how we mixed in the 

 straw. He called it succotash." 



Mr. Pape: "I have done just that way, and better clover 

 I never saw and the cattle will eat the straw just as well 

 as they eat the clover. It raised such heat that it smoked for 

 weeks out of the holes provided for ventilation. The clover 

 was kind of brown when we took it out — a bright brown. 

 You can put clover in green and heat it to a great extent and it 

 don't hurt it if there's no rain-water on it." 



Mr. George : " The question with clover is to get rid of the 

 moisture, to preserve it. You don't want to allow the fermenta- 

 tion to go on in clover. In ensilage you want to protect the 

 moisture instead of letting it off; that is the preservative part in 

 ensilage." 



Now, in regard to the preservation of ensilage there are 

 a few scientific questions that enter into it, which, when they 

 are properly understood, are very simple. Of course every- 

 body knows there is more or less loss in drying out corn-fodder. 

 As exposed to the weather in the drying process it chemically 

 changes it to an extent, and you cannot restore that chemical 

 composition again to put it into the soluble form that you have 

 in the green corn. In the green corn, it is in a form that gives 

 the greatest nutriment to our stock ; they assimilate it easily be- 

 cause it is in just the right condition ; but in the drying process 

 there comes a chemical change which has to be resolved again 

 as far as it can be by the energies of the animal economy into 

 its original form before it can be readily assimilated." 



: The President: "And that means you have got to take a 

 part of the food to mix the other part of the food before it can 

 be assimilated by the body." 



