I32 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



rarely some animal may be indifferent to it when first offered, 

 but soon learns to like it and eats it with avidity. 



But ensilage is not in itself what scientific men call a " com- 

 plete " food, i. e., one possessing all the requisites for nourishing 

 all parts of the animal system. Therefore meal of some kind or 

 other similar food should be added to make the ration " com- 

 plete." 



As compared with the best quality of clover hay as a food 

 for milch cows a number of agricultural chemists rate it at one- 

 third the value of such hay, weight for weight, but there is not 

 always free choice open to us in the selection. Take such a 

 season as that of last year with its terrible drouth. If you had 

 sowed ensilage corn early, and had taken good care of it, you 

 would have got, in all probability, half a crop at least, but what 

 proportion of an average crop did you get from your best 

 meadows? I know, only too well, that on my place if it had 

 not been for twenty-three acres of ensilage a majority of the 

 cows might as well have been given away for there was no sale 

 for them and not feed enough for them on the remainder of 200 

 acres to carry them through the winter. The herd consists of 

 47 head, with a bunch of young stock. 



One of the recommendations of ensilage is the large quantity 

 which may be raised on an acre of land; and another very im- 

 portant one is the small space needed for holding the yield of 

 many acres after it is passed through the cutter. Prof. Henry, 

 in the official report of the Wisconsin Experiment Station, states 

 that on good land 15 to 20 tons of green fodder can be grown 

 on one acre. I do not know what variety of corn he used, but 

 as this report was issued when the very large variety now 

 grown for ensilage had not come into general use, it is not re- 

 markable that larger yields by actual weight have since been 

 reported. Twenty-five and thirty tons are so reported, and in 

 the last number of the Albany Cultivator a New Hampshire 

 correspondent asserts that he raised 32 weighed tons per acre. 

 He calls himself a convert to ensilage, and says that, " from 

 having at one time been disgusted at what he deemed the ex- 



