THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
February 25 
I 44 
SIMPLE STAVE-SILO QUESTIONS. 
HOTTING ; DRAINAGE ; HOW BUILT. 
I contemplate building an addition to my barn, 
and would like to build a silo inside. The addi¬ 
tion is to be 32 feet square, underground stables 
walled up on three sides; silo 12 feet in diam¬ 
eter, 22 or 24 feet high. If such a silo is built of 
staves, what kind of wood should be used, and 
how should it be formed at the bottom so as to 
exclude the air, under the necessary expansion 
and contraction of the wood ? How much tak¬ 
ing up and letting out of the hoops would likely 
be necessary? Is the protection of an ordinary 
single-boarded barn sufficient to keep ensilage 
from freezing where the mercury at times goes 
20degrees below zero, or mast there be a double 
wall to the silo ? Should a silo have provision 
made for drainage? Should the staves be 
matched for best results ? a. o. 
Weedville, Pa. 
ANSWERED BY L. A. CLINTON. 
A silo 12 feet in diameter and 24 feet 
high has a capacity of 54 tons. Practi¬ 
cally, it would have a capacity of only 
about 40 tons of settled ensilage. This 
amount would be sufficient to supply 13 
cows from November 1 to April 1. 
It Won’t Rot. —A wooden silo, if prop¬ 
erly constructed, will not rot in five or 
six years. The trouble with silos in the 
past has been that they were not prop¬ 
erly constructed. If wood is placed un¬ 
der such conditions that it cannot dry, 
but is constantly subjected to moisture, 
it will soon decay. The tub silo is so 
constructed that the staves become thor¬ 
oughly dry when the silo is empty, and 
thus the wood is preserved. We cannot 
tell what is the life of a tub silo be¬ 
cause, so far as we know, none has as 
yet begun to decay. In central New 
York, with prices as they are at the pres¬ 
ent time, a good quality of hemlock, if 
it can be purchased, makes the cheapest 
material for staves. Southern cypress 
would, no doubt, be more lasting than 
either hemlock or pine, but the price is 
usually so high as to preclude its use in 
most cases. A good quality of hemlock, 
free from loose knots, can hardly be im¬ 
proved upon, and it will last for many 
years. 
Bottom and Staves.— No extra pre¬ 
caution for the bottom of the silo is 
necessary. Tne foundation should be 
first paved with stones, and then a thin 
mortar, made of one part Portland or 
ltosendale cement and two parts of good 
building sand, should be poured over the 
stone paving. 
To lessen the amount of mortar re¬ 
quired, gravel or small stones should be 
used to fill in the openings between the 
larger stones. This cement foundation 
should be made level, and the staves 
should be set directly upon it. No 
drainage is required if the corn is al¬ 
lowed to come to a proper degree of ma¬ 
turity before it is cut. After the silo is 
filled, it is well to put some mortar 
around the outside at the base of the 
staves. This will serve to exclude the 
air, and will also assist in holding the 
staves in place. 
The hoops should be made in two sec¬ 
tions for a silo 12 feet in diameter, and 
about one foot allowed on each section 
for take-up. In case it is found that 
more take-up is needed, washers may be 
made of pieces of gas pipe. These pieces 
slipped on over the hoop and the nut 
screwed down upon them will furnish 
all the take-up necessary. Before the 
silo is filled, the hoops should be drawn 
tight, so that no cracks will be left be¬ 
tween the staves. After filling, watch 
the hoops closely, and if the strain be¬ 
comes very great, loosen the hoops 
slightly. After the first week or two, all 
danger will be over. 
the ensilage could not be improved upon. 
The temperature this Winter has been as 
low as 18 degrees below zero. The en¬ 
silage then froze around the edges for 
about two inches. This frozen material 
was allowed to remain in place until it 
thawed out, when it was fed without in¬ 
jury. 
In constructing the two silos above 
mentioned, the staves for one were bev¬ 
eled and for the other not. Where the 
staves were not beveled, the ensilage 
kept as well as where they were beveled. 
In constructing a silo with a diameter of 
less than 12 feet, the staves should be 
slightly beveled; but for a silo with a 
diameter of 12 feet or more, no beveling 
or matching is necessary. 
FEEDING THE CALF. 
A reader in Pennsylvania, who has 
made a business of raising calves, says 
never to mix corn meal in the calf’s 
milk. Nothing will scour a calf quicker. 
He has tried linseed meal, linseed jelly, 
rennet and even melted butter in feed¬ 
ing calves. The keynote of success is 
temperature. Have your milk from 98 to 
100 degrees. Don’t give a heifer a spoon¬ 
ful of corn meal until she begins to give 
milk. Leave the calf with the cow till 
it is three days old, and then give one- 
half new and one-half skim-milk, heated 
to 98 degrees. Give this for several 
days, then put it on skim-milk, heated 
to 98 degrees, until weaned, and never 
overfeed. He uses a calf feeder with a 
rubber tube for sucking. This, he says, 
keeps the calf in better health, as it 
prevents it from drinking the milk too 
fast. 
If the calf is constipated, lower the 
temperature of the milk for one or two 
feeds to 90 degrees. If it scours, run the 
temperature up to 105, for a feed or two. 
One can regulate the bowels accurately 
by the temperature of the milk Never 
mix anything with the milk, At about 
four weeks old, give the calf bran in a 
box, and ail the clover hay it will eat. 
Don’t feed any corn meal. Try to get it 
to consume all the rough feed possible. 
Don’t be afraid if the calf becomes pot¬ 
bellied, so long as the digestion is right. 
It will help the calf wonderfully to rub 
it well with a stiff brush or the hand 
along the spine and sides once or twice 
each day. This sort of massage treat¬ 
ment will surely help the calf. The 
four great essentials in raising a good 
calf are cleanliness, temperature of the 
feed, not mixing anything with the milk, 
and not over-feeding. 
PROFITABLE PIG FEEDING. 
Gov. Hoard, at the State Dairymen’s 
Convention, at Gouverneur, N. Y., gave 
the result of some valuable experience 
in the feeding of pigs. He bought pigs 
from the patrons of his factory at 4% 
cents per 100 pounds, and after feeding 
them on warm skim-milk for 56 days, 
sold them back to the same people at a 
gain of 22% cents per 100 pounds. He 
then took another batch of pigs, and by 
feeding them corn meal and middlings 
in connection with the warm skim-milk, 
was able at the same time to send them 
back at a profit of from 27 to 35 cents 
per 100 pounds. 
He then took pigs ranging all the way 
from 20 pounds up, and experimented 
with them to discover what weight gave 
the best results for a certain amount of 
feed. He found it to be 50 pounds. From 
50 pounds up, he found that it took a 
constantly increasing ration to maintain 
the weight of the pig alone. It took 
about a pound of feed alone to maintain 
the weight of a pig of 50 pounds. When 
the pig weighed 300 pounds, it required 
six pounds of feed a day to hold him at 
that weight, and of course, to continue 
feeding a 300-pound pig at six pounds of 
food, would be a dead loss, because there 
would be no gain in weight. 
He said that pigs are like some people’s 
love ; they are entirely filled up with 
love of themselves, and you could have 
what ran over. In the case of the pigs, 
it took a certain amount to fill them up 
to keep them at the standard weight, 
and all the benefit you could get out of 
it would be the increase of weight 
secured by extra feeding. He alleged 
that the profits should come from the 
farm end of the business and not from 
the factory end, and that this profit 
could be made in the proper use of by¬ 
products of the factory. 
,. Even a 
< I brave man 
shudders at 
/i, the thought 
L j of being torn 
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n J in r the > i aw9 
•/ v of a fero- 
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of the laborer to 
that of the pro¬ 
fessional man, 
IVLT there are thou - 
VV / ^nds at the 
f'S hii-iV mercy of a tiger 
more relentless 
than any found 
in all India. 
That tiger is the dread disease known a9 
consumption. It slays more men and wo¬ 
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summer shower. It steals upon its victim 
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There is a sure and certain protection 
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Medicines dealers sell it, and have nothing 
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When a dealer urges some substitute he’s 
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Dr. Pierce’s book, “The Common Sense 
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will send to the World’s Dispensary Med¬ 
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stamps, to pay the cost of mailing only. 
For cloth binding, send 31 stamps. 
Bone Cutters 
Green cut bone is essential 
to a balanced ration forall fowls, 
young or old. The Webster & 
Hannum bone cutter has al¬ 
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poultrymen. 
The new cutter-head is practically 
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Only award at World’s Fair, Chicago. 
Booklet all about hens and how to make them 
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POULTRY 
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Frozen Ensilage. —If the silo is con¬ 
structed in the barn, the protection of 
the single wall of the barn will be 
ample. At the Cornell Experiment Sta¬ 
tion, two silos were constructed last 
Fall; one was put in the barn and the 
other was built outside, with no protec¬ 
tion to the ensilage except that offered 
by the two inch staves of which the silo 
was constructed, and a plain board roof 
The ensilage has kept perfectly in both 
silos. The one out-of-doors has given 
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SENT ON TRIAL to be returned at my expense if not Entirely Satisfactory. 
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Address DUANE H. NASH, Sole Mfr., MILLINGTON, N. J., or CHICACO- ILL. 
PLEASE MENTION THIS PAPER. 
