THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
10 pounds linseed or cottonseed meal. Four¬ 
teen pounds of this composition in addition to 
hay and silage make a well balanced daily 
feed for a milk cow matured and of medium 
size. For fattening, lessen the oats and in¬ 
crease the corn. For growing young stock 
lessen the corn and add wheat middlings. 
I find no objectionable feature in feeding 
silage. I believe there is none where prop¬ 
erly fed. The future of ensilage will be to 
take the place of roots and to lessen the quan¬ 
tity of hay and fodder. To the English farmer 
no ration in the past was complete without 
roots. The cost of growing these with the un¬ 
certainty of a crop has led the American 
farmer to accept silage as a substitute, and 
surprised him to find it cheaper, better and to 
cover a far longer percentage of his feed for 
his cattle. 
No farmer of ordinary means can afford to 
be without a silo, but should build it in pro¬ 
portion to the use he designs it for. An extrava¬ 
gant building and equipage are of no impor¬ 
tance in preserving silage. A suitable 
place can be excavated in any building walled 
out and filled with an ordinary feed cutter 
procured at small cost. h. b. richards, 
Sec. Dutch Belted Cattle Breed’s’ Ass’n. 
■-♦ ♦ ♦- 
ENSILAGE—CORN-FODDER. 
C. S. RICE. 
In the “Lunch” furnished by the Rural of 
January 28, the following paragraph may be 
found: “The capital required for machines, 
men and teams in making silage puts 
the system quite out of the reach of 
farmers in general.” Owing to the cost 
of the silo and the necessary machin¬ 
ery, and the variable quality of silage, pres¬ 
ervation of corn-fodder by this method has 
not become as general as many people sup¬ 
posed it would a few years ago. That good 
silage is of great value has been fully demon- 
trated in its use by practical and scientific 
men; but I am not aware 11 that it is now 
claimed that anything is added to the green 
fodder by storiug it in the silo. 
By the method of preserving corn-fodder 
that has been in use on my farm for several 
years, the feeding value of the crop as it is 
when cut in September is retained for several 
months, and as the process is not expensive 
and does not require extra labor, ic should 
come into general use by those who do not 
avail themselves of the silo. My experience 
with corn-fodder extends over a period of 40 
years, and various methods of cultivation and 
preservation of the crop have been tried. The 
one now in use is by far the cheapest of all, 
and has been pronounced better than a silo by 
some who have had experience with that 
method. 
This cheap and practicable method is as fol¬ 
lows: The seed is drilled in rows 32 inches 
apart with about eight kernels to the foot in 
the row. The growing crop is cultivated be¬ 
tween the rows several times to keep the land 
free from grass and weeds. The variety known 
locally as ‘ ‘sow fodder corn” is grown and on 
land of medium fertility it attains a hight of 
from seven to ten feet. Corn of this hight 
grown in rows is not liable to be blown down; 
can be cut with a strong reaper and can be 
handled with a fork. It is cut when the tassels 
are perfectly developed as the fodder has then 
its greatest value. In cutting, two men go 
with the reaper and the rakes are allowed to 
run, but not to throw off the corn. When the 
table is well loaded the team is stopped and 
the men pull the corn off and to one side so 
that it will be out of the way on the next 
round and so they proceed around the piece. 
On the next round the bunches are left oppo¬ 
site the first ones, but a little further back so 
that they will not become entangled, thus 
forming rows two or three rods apart with the 
spaces between the rows left perfectly clean. 
Directly after cutting, the corn is cocked up 
in large cocks, three or four of the bunches 
being put in each cock. No harm arises it 
this is delayed a day or two; but the corn 
must not be allowed to dry as half dried fod¬ 
der will mould when placed in the cock. I have 
cocked up the growth of from four to six acres 
a year for several years and have never suffered 
a dollar’s loss by sourness, mould or rot. The 
corn may be fed from these cocks without 
further labor through September, October and 
November, and will continue as good as when 
cut, except that it is a little weather-beaten on 
the outside. 
Corn fodder put up in fair shape when per¬ 
fectly green is not penetrated by rains as it 
settles together very closely, and water and 
air are excluded by the broad leaves. If 
enough is grown to last well into or through 
the winter, it should be placed in stacks in 
about one month after cocking. This was 
done on my farm last fall by using a mud 
sled, drawing two or three cocks at a time, 
two men placing large, solid forkfuls on the 
sled and then on the stack, thus loosening up 
the fodder but little. The stacks were made 
on the field where the corn grew, driving first 
on one side and then on the other. They were 
made eight feet wide, 25 or 30 feet long and as 
high as the men could reach with their forks. 
The corn had to be drawn only a short dis¬ 
tance to form such a stack and the work was 
done rapidly. As in the cock so in the stack, 
there is no trouble with rain penetrating corn- 
fodder if it is left in fair shape on top. The 
stacks can be readily cut down with a hay 
knife and a section sufficient for a load can be 
removed to the barn and fed from the wagon 
or sleigh without extra labor, and the part of 
the stack remaining is not exposed untopped 
to the weather. 
After the middle of winter as portions of 
the barn are emptied of hay, a quantity can 
be drawn and stored at one time; but this in¬ 
volves more labor in handling than when fed 
from the sleigh, if the barn and stable are 
adapted to feeding in this way. Fodder treat¬ 
ed in this manner is never dry like that cured 
by exposure to sun and air, and is of excellent 
quality, and there is no waste. After months 
of feeding of such uncut fodder this winter in 
the stable, a visitor would be unable to find 
waste enough to indicate that any corn had 
been fed, as the cows ate it greedily and per¬ 
fectly clean. 
We have made winter butter tor years, and 
find that cows fed once a day on this fodder, 
and once on clover hay and a fair feed of 
meal from peas and oats and shorts mixed, 
will yield a profitable return in milk and but¬ 
ter. 
The above method has been well tested, and 
dairymen will do well to try it if their land is 
adapted to clover and corn. It is alike prac¬ 
ticable with one-fourth of an acre, or with 
any number of acres. I suppose the fodder to 
be of as much value as average silage, and it 
can be had without the expense of a silo or 
machinery, or extra laborers at the time of 
cutting. I shall continue to raise five to ten 
acres a year, as we have done for years past, 
but have no intention of building a silo, as 
the present method is perfectly satisfactory. 
Lowville, N. Y. 
NOT FAVORABLE TO SILAGE. 
Our silo was filled three years. We bottled 
about 200 quarts of milk daily, and sent it to 
Brooklyn. There were complaints that our 
milk was not rich enough, and it did not keep 
as well as it should have done when our cows 
were fed on silage, although the amount 
and quality of ground feed were nearly 
the same for many years. We discontinued 
bottling our milk and sold it to an ex¬ 
tensive milk dealer established in businesss 
over 30 years. He soon informed us that he 
could not take our milk if we fed silage, as 
from the experience he had of it from other 
parties as well as from us, it did not give sat¬ 
isfaction to his customers, and he refused to 
receive any such milk from all. 
We gave up this costly experiment and there 
are no more complaints of the quality of our 
milk. We doubt whether the fermenting of 
green corn adds anything to its value over 
well cured corn fodder when dry, and to pro¬ 
duce the best quality of pure milk, will fodder 
that has undergone acetous fermentation make 
as good an article as uufermeuted fodder, and 
is not the extra labor of filling the silo lost 
which is a great waste of time and work to 
the farmers? isaac hicks & sons. 
PATENT SILAGE. 
About February 1 we received by mail, 
from Mr. S. M. Colcord, of Dover, Mass., 
about a pound of silage which was taken from 
the silo three days before its arrival. It was 
the most perfect specimen of preserved fod¬ 
der we have ever seen, sweet and fragrant. 
It was sampled by many visitors, several of 
whom were perfectly willing to put it into 
their mouths and taste it. We have kept that 
package of silage on a desk in a warm room 
ever since. It is now perfectly dry, green and 
sweet, in far better condition than any corn 
fodder we have seen. Naturally we were 
anxious to learn the history of this silage, and 
the following facts, though by no means new, 
will doubtless interest many of our readers. 
Mr. Colcord writes the following account of 
the steps which led to his invention: 
I commenced the study of ensilage in 1879, 
and visited all the silos that had the reputa¬ 
tion of being successful, read everything I 
could hear or that had been published, and 
hauled stones enough to build six silos, fully 
confident that I could find a solution to the 
problem of obtaining perfect silage. I could 
easily see the reason of fail are in every case, 
but as long as I followed the lead of others I 
could make no progress, and up to January, 
1883, I had not been able to find silage that I 
would be wiiling to feed. I examined a great 
number of silos and neutralized the acid in 
them with liquor potass, to ascertain the 
standard vinegar strength in 00 pounds,a day’s 
ration, and found the average quantity to be 
enormous. [Some of Mr. Colcord’s experi¬ 
ments show that silage was being fed which 
contained in 60 pounds enough acid to make 
four gallons of standard vinegar.— Eds.] I 
then found that the commonly called sweet 
silage had been this sour silage, the acid hav¬ 
ing been decomposed by farther fermentation, 
to what may be called the putrid fermentation, 
giving those foul and offensive odors to every¬ 
thing near them. This state is a far worse 
condition than the acid state, although adver¬ 
tized as sweet silage in its best condition. I 
found it useless to state the facts to the pro¬ 
prietors of these silos, because there was no 
fixed standard of quality, or auy pure samples 
to be found for comparison. But there yet 
remained to me this one fact, that without air 
there was no heat or fermentation, without 
fermentation no decomposition or foul odors; 
that to bring about the condition in which 
cauned goods are preserved, by mechanical 
means, cold pressure in place of heat, making 
the juice from the corn take the place of the 
air in the forage, would remedy all the defects 
and give us perfectly preserved green forage; 
but the question was how to do it. 
During the winter of 1882-3 I was confined 
to the house by sickness, and I resolved to 
make one more unaided struggle. I knew 
that as soon as I piled up the corn it would 
heat, and that if I ever succeeded the air must 
be removered as fast as it was cut, or that I 
must kill the fermentation by chemicals, (sal¬ 
icylic acid or carbolic acid). I made calcula¬ 
tions about the quantity it would take, and 
gave it up for fear of breaking the market, 
and therefore confined my thoughts to me¬ 
chanical means, which finally resulted in a 
device which I have called the Silo Governor. 
I worked upon it for months, and finally felt 
sure that it would do what I wanted to accom¬ 
plish ; that if I could not get out all the air I 
could doctor the small remainder. I then had 
to make a system to go with the device, and 
find some sure way of getting tight silos, with 
level, perpendicular walls and some way to 
avoid weighting, and of getting heavy pressure 
that I could put on aud take off at pleasure. 
Then I wanted some practical way of increas¬ 
ing the capacity of the silo to my crops; then 
some way of handling the forage from the si¬ 
lo to the cattle; then the surest way of having 
the best crop for my silo. I have had perfect 
success o«i all these points, and even better 
than I anticipated, but I have spent so much 
time and money on it that it has caused me 
much anxiety, not to say embarrassment, aud 
to get some returns, I took out a patent before 
I had even tried it, to make sure that I am the 
sole original inventor. I made broad claims 
and a great many of them. They were every 
one allowed, and came through the patent 
office in nine days. 
My device or apparatus that goes into the 
silo is all that I have taken a patent for, but 
all the rest I give to the public freely. I be-' 
lieve the way I built my silo is the only true 
way, built between planks. We can never feel 
safe with wooden silos, stone walls are usu¬ 
ally very rough aud uneven, and lime mor¬ 
tar is very bad because the acetic acid dis¬ 
solves lime and it is always present even two 
days after you commence to fill. Carbonic 
and acetic acids with air, aye all the gases 
that come out of my silo. If my -patent cov¬ 
ered the removal of these alone it would be all 
I need. I never had any chance to try what 
else it would do. I have never had over 72° 
of heat, or any fermentation in the silo. No 
odor of silage in the silo or barn. I have been 
feeding the silage three months and have 
enough to last six months longer. I can feed 
an average of 60 pounds daily. I had a crop 
of 19 tons to the acre of corn raised upon land 
that was poor and gravelly, using 500 pounds 
of Tucker’s superphosphate spread broadcast 
aud 500 pounds of the same in the drill. We 
cut down with a lightning hay knife a smooth 
solid fac^ 13)*3 feet high across the silo. The 
forage improves in quality as we cut it back 
aud it very nearly represents canned goods. 
You can take a handful of it from any part 
of the face and squeeze the juice from it. The 
juice has taken the place of the air through¬ 
out the mass. 
Briefly stated, the objected of Mr. Colcord’s 
ivention is to speedly remove atmospheric 
air and other gasses from the silo aud thus 
prevent heat and fermentation. The less air 
in the silo the less chance for fermentation, 
aud the more perfectly the silage will be pre¬ 
served. With these ideas in mind he placed a 
system of perforated pipes in the bottom of the 
silo in large silos two sets of pipes were placed 
—and he applied a heavy pressure to the top of 
the silage. The air, juice and water were 
pressed out through the pipes, so that heat aud 
fermentation were rendered impossible. To 
carry out this plan the silo must possess three 
essential points, viz. :absolutely air-tight walls, 
a place for the escape of air and juice through 
the pipes, and a system of even and continuous 
pressure at the top. The “governor” covered 
the second point perfectly. The air-tight walls 1 
MAY S 
were built of cement as true to the perpen¬ 
dicular as possible Large timbers were placed 
above the silo to which strong jack-screw\s 
were attached. The silage was covered with 
matched plank made to fit the silo. Pressure 
by meaus of the jack-screws was applied and 
the air, gasses aud water were forced out at 
the bottom. When all was expelled the bottom 
was closed and the whole mass was left till 
wanted for feeding. This silo in32xl2xl7 feet, 
arranged to make it 20 instead of 17 feet deep, 
by placing three feet of plank around the top. 
The wall is 18 inches thick on the lower half. 
a nd 12 inches thick for the upper half. It 
took 122 barrels of cement: 244 barrels of 
coarse sand; 244 barrels of small cobble stone: 
244 barrels of small broken stone, and about 
3,000 gallons of water to make up the walls, 
and it took six men three weeks to do the 
work. There was eight days’ carpenters’ 
work in putting up the staging through which 
the wall was built. This cost was about twice 
what it would be again. While silage made 
under this system is more expensive than that 
where no “governor” is used we are conddent 
that the quality of the product is improved. 
Kasmpfer’s Irises for Summer Flowers. 
—We have nothing more gorgeous, says Mr. 
Falconer in the American Florist. They 
come into bloom about the first of July and 
last a fortnight. They succeed the first flush 
of sweet peas and mignonette, and immediate¬ 
ly precede the flush of gladioluses and China 
asters. They are perfectly hardy and grow 
and bloom well in any good ground, but the 
moister the better. We can increase them in 
quantity by division, aud raise them with the 
greatest ease from seed. Most of the seedlings 
will bloom the second year. We have all 
shades of purple—the most intense royal pur¬ 
ple and gold, and pure white varieties, also most 
curiously marbled flowers. True, the individ¬ 
ual flowers are of brief duration, but they 
bloom in succession, and the buds after beiDg 
cut open well in water: for a night or a day 
they are magnificent, aud as they should be 
cut with their loDg, leafy stems, orchids cannot 
surpass them iu rich effect when they are used 
in large masses and loosely arranged. 
Street Trees. —Iu no branch of rural eco¬ 
nomy, perhaps, are Americans so far behind 
the people of almost every country of Europe, 
as iu the selection, planting and care of street 
aud road-side trees; and this is particularly true 
in the case of the plantations made in most 
of our large cities and their suburbs. So says 
our admirably-conducted contemporary Gar¬ 
den and Forest. Two mistakes are almost in¬ 
variably made in undertakings of this char¬ 
acter m the United States: the work is done 
too cheaply, aud the trees are badly selected 
with reference to future effect. Saplings dug 
from the woods with mutilated roots and 
branches, are planted in shallow soil, and are 
then left to struggle unaided against the en¬ 
emies which beset urban and suburban trees. 
There is no poorer economy than trying to 
plant street trees chesply. Unless the work 
can be done well it had better not be done at 
all. The ground should be thoroughly pre¬ 
pared, and well selected nursery-grown trees, 
carefully pruned for the purpose, should alone 
be used. The American habit of taking sap¬ 
lings from the woods, cutting off all their 
branches and half their stems, and then using 
them as street-trees, cannot be too strongly 
condemned. The result of such treatment is 
this: A fork is formed by two or more hori¬ 
zontal branches pushing up from the top of 
the cut stem. Water gathers and stands in 
this fork, aud gradually carries decay dow n 
into the trunk of the tree, destroying it long 
before it reaches maturity. 
Iu the matter of selection we make as many 
mistakes, and almost as serious ones, as in our 
methods of planting. It is a well established 
rule, based upon common sense, that trees of 
one variety only should be planted on one con¬ 
tinuous street or avenue. The reason is obvi¬ 
ous. If trees of different varieties are used, 
that uniformity essential in urban planting to 
the production of harmony of effect will be 
lost. Trees of different varieties grow differ¬ 
ently. Some grow more rapidly than others; 
some come into leaf and some lose their foliage 
earlier than others; some, as they approach 
maturity, assume a stately, and others a grace¬ 
ful aspect; and a variety which may make a 
country road-side beautiful, is entirely out of 
place in connection with the formal lines of 
city buildings. This rule is rarely observed 
in the United States. Trees of one variety 
are rarely planted in continuous lines The 
pendulous American Elm alternates with the 
