at Home and Abroad. 
215 
Tliis be.ast uevcr wvis jiut up to fatten, but received only the ordinary rations 
of the other cattle. At the present time, I have 4 heifers : one, a yearling, 
weighs 340 kil. ; another, 1 year and 7 months old, weighs 454 kil. ; another, 
lyear and 3 months old, weighs 425 kil.; and the last, 11 months old, weighs 
1289 kil. I may observe thiit in January 1880 I published, in 'Le Journal 
d'Agriculture Pratique,' all my tables of rations. Finally, silage is, during 
the whole year, the basis of the feeding of the cattle on my est<ile, and yields 
me results, several exam^iles of which I have cited. 
I have never found in the silage any special results attributable to the 
.succulence of the crops when pitted. The succulence of crops cannot, I 
fancy, influence the preservation, different agencies alone can influence it. 
I beg to har.d you my observations : some frozen maize, that is to say, some 
that had been completely exfoliated by an early frost, pitted on the 28th of 
October, 1881, and analy.«ed the 3rd of December, 1881, gave a nutritive 
value of g^Y'* almost complete ration, when eight other analyses made 
in 1877, 1878 and 1879, 1880, and 1882 have never given a nutritive value 
higher than g o j^; it is therefore evident that the frost, by killing the leaves, 
left only the stalks, w-hich is much richer in sugar. The richest silage 
that I have made was with sainfoin, the analysis of which showed the 
nutritive value to be j-Vs > ^^'^ was rather too rich. 
In spite of different opinions, I have no doubt that the pitting of wet fodder 
has an injurious effect on its fermentation. The rain-water which brings prin- 
cijially ammoniacal nitrogen (Schloesing) into the silo introduces a principle 
which may turn the mass acid. "When the croiDS are very wet, the fermenta- 
tion becomes butyric, and the mass gives off an unwholesome smell. The 
animals will sometimes eat it, but only when pushed by hunger. Acidity 
in this case increases rapidly during the period of consumption ; I will even 
say that it is good to avoid the dew, and if anything can add to the success 
of the preservation, it rs, — I will not say making hay of it in the sun, — 
but allowing it to fade, and get rid of all its outer humidity. 
The proof of this fact has been recently given in a pitting of rye and 
vetches. Eain had wetted a part in the fields; the pitting was begun under 
good conditions, and the fodder in the bottom of the silo was good ; where the 
lodder had been pitted wet, the cut presented a black stripe, well defined, 
and the smell of which was acid. The bottom portion had a good alcoholic 
smell : the upper part made with the same crops (but which had been cut 
in the morning and pitted only in the evening, because we were stopped the 
evening before by rain, and I did not wish to bring back the whole of my 
workpeople the next morning, so as to finish at once), had received the 
morning sun, was thus rid of all dew, and had a smell of burnt sugar really 
succulent. It cannot be attributed to the place occupied at the top of the 
mass, this last part being more thau 80 cent. (32 inches) in thickness. The 
contents of each of my silos last about three months, without deterioration; 
but, as I have explained above, the fodder is only consumed according to 
the requirements of tiie farm. Each year in June and July I buy grains 
from a brewer at Tours, and put from 12 to 15 tons into a silo. For this 
purpose, one of my silos is divided into three parts ; I generally fill onl}' 
two. This silo is covered and weighted like the others: it is put in use 
almost immediately after being filled, and thus lasts five or six months 
without appreciable loss, but only a small cut of the whole depth is taken 
each day. It has often happened that, having a careful man, I have had, 
at the time of renewal of my stock of grains, some of that which had been 
* I should explain that tliis system of expressing the nutritive value of food 
meausthat the fodder coutidus one part of digestible matter to a certain quantity 
not available as food. 
