784 
TH EC R URAL, N E W-YORKEK 
THE LADY OR THE SILO. 
[We often print articles which give 
the unpopular side of a subject. Here is 
one on silos. Personally we believe a 
good silo is a great aid to the dairy¬ 
men. Yet this man puts up an argument 
which is entitled to consideration.] 
I note on page 310 that the question 
has not yet been settled as to whether 
a woman 60 years of age should climb to 
the top of a stave silo and throw down 
silage to feed cows. I say emphatically, 
no! For no young man, no matter how 
pressed with work, should ask his mother 
or his wife to do any such thing. The 
average farmer—and no doubt this boy 
will also plead guilty—wastes each day 
ample time to get out sufficient silage to 
feed 25 cows twice, at best only a 15- 
minute job. Many an Eastern farmer 
without even a thought of the value of 
time will lean against the wheel of a 
neighbor’s buggy or the door frame of 
the grain store long enough not only to 
get out his silage but also to curry his 
horses and groom his cows thoroughly. 
It is a shame and a disgrace to let a 
herd of dairy cattle go from November 
to May untouched by brush or card, and 
covered with tilth. If done daily it will 
not require two minutes per animal to 
keep them in tine order. 
But to return to our subject, the silo. 
After this young man has got out the 
silage—which, by the way, should always 
be fed after milking, if the cattle and 
barn are clean—the housework not press¬ 
ing and the woman a lover of animals, 
perhaps the mother might do the milking; 
and I will warrant that she will get more 
milk, and that the cows will have a bet¬ 
ter time than they would with any man 
about. At the risk of being burned at 
the stake as a heretic, I tell this young 
man he does not need a silo, and I ven¬ 
ture the assertion first advanced just 30 
years ago by the veteran breeder, William 
Crozier, that the silo has no permanent 
place in American agriculture. The silo 
has no stronger advocate than Frank 
Sherman Peer, and yet he admits that 
it is nothing to agriculture as compared 
with the soiling of cattle with Summer 
green feed. 
Massachusetts was the original home 
of the silo in the United States. It was 
in Billerica about 1879, that Dr. Bailey 
built the first one. Yet Massachusetts 
is gradually abandoning them. For 
miles around my home are farms fitted 
with silos which are no longer used. 
Just to quote one case in point, the late 
George Freeman of Shrewsbury was one 
of the “old school” of farmers, keen, thor¬ 
ough and successful. He built himself a 
very fine silo at a cost of $500, and this 
he filled on a few occasions. But he 
soon found he could put his silage land 
into other crops, and with the money he 
actually paid out for silo filling buy all 
the extra baled hay he needed. Here in 
Massachusetts it is useless to figure on 
much less than a dollar per ton merely 
to get the corn into the silo, and on oc¬ 
casions when the “September gales” 
broke and twisted the corn so that the 
binder could not be used, the cost would 
easily mount to $1.50 per ton. It may 
be set down as an axiom that in this 
State every good man has some steady 
work, so that to get together a gang of 
laborers for silo filling means the pay¬ 
ment of 20 cents an hour to incompetent 
and worthless help. Then add $5 per 
day for nine hours work of double teams 
and $3.50 for single teams, and up goes 
the tonnage cost. The cost figured in 
the foregoing presupposes the hiring of 
a cutter and engine, but makes no al¬ 
lowance for the work done by the owner’s 
own men and horses. 
Then again, the farm where silage is 
grown often decreases in fertility, for on 
account of the short haul, some field 
near the barn is chosen for the crop, and 
the constant applying to this field of 
most of the Winter’s manure robs the 
outlying fields of a fertility that might 
be theirs through a judicious system of 
rotation. There is still another objection 
that one seldom hears mentioned, and 
that is, the number of times some cow 
in the herd goes “off feed” through moldy 
silage. No matter how good the silo or 
how nice the silage there will be moldy 
spots, either because the corn was too 
dry or improperly mixed, or even because 
some portions were tramped too much. 
This mold, white, blue, red, pink or 
green (and I have seen all these colors) 
is poison to a cow, and I have known 
careful feeders to throw out by hand any 
mold they found. Under a proper sys¬ 
tem of dry Winter feeding with either 
beet pulp, or plenty of bran or linseed, 
the cows are never “off feed.” If the 
young farmer will plant some small- 
stalked variety of flint corn he will have 
part of the grain ration for his cows, 
horses, hens and hogs, his cows will eat 
most of the fodder without cutting, and 
the residue can be used for horse bedding. 
Better still, all the work from start to 
finish can be done by the farm’s regular 
crew. Of course there are farms, heavily, 
stocked, where the silo works well. I 
know of one farm where 100 cows are 
kept on 60 acres of land by buying some 
hay and filling four or five silos. But 
this farmer has plenty of men. horses, 
and tools to do most of the work himself. 
At some time in their lives most farm¬ 
ers get the silo fever. Some resist it and 
some succumb. The writer had it so 
badly that it cost $1,500 to cure him. 
He built the first stave silo in this town 
14 years ago at a cost of $400 and later 
spent $117 more for a cutter and car¬ 
rier. (We already had steam engine.) 
Then for 10 years he filled this silo re¬ 
ligiously at the cost of a thousand dol¬ 
lars, and fed the product to 25 milking 
cows. But the best thing he ever did 
was when at the solicitation of his wife, 
he tore the silo to pieces and converted 
it into a cornerib. 
Massachusetts, iienry g. mansfield. 
Hain Sandwich for Cattle. 
What is gained by planting sunflowers 
or Soy beans in corn for silage and how 
is the seed mixed? 
In theory using the sunflowers or beans 
is like putting the meat into the sand¬ 
wich. Corn represents the bread and but¬ 
ter containing chiefly the food elements 
which make fat but are somewhat lack¬ 
ing in the elements which make bone and 
muscle. These elements are supplied in 
greater amount by the sunflower and 
beans. Thus the theory is that when 
mixed with the corn these supply the 
“meat in the sandwich.” A few farmers 
carry out this plan but most of them 
prefer to cut the beans, cure as hay and 
feed them separately. 
Dairy Ration. 
I want a balanced grain ration for my 
cows of the following feeds: Ground 
corn with cob, cottonseed meal, and mid¬ 
dlings. J. H. 
You do not state what hay is available 
but we take it that silage and corn fod¬ 
der or some mixed hay may be used. In 
this case the mixture you are using is far 
too low in protein. It would be better 
to mix three parts of corn and cob meal, 
three parts of wheat middlings, two parts 
bran, and two parts cottonseed meal. 
G. E. W. 
Turnips or Mangels. 
Could I sow Cow-horn turnips with my 
cover crops, which are either rye and 
Crimson clover or rye alone, and feed 
them as succulent food for cows the com¬ 
ing Winter? Would I get better re¬ 
sults by sowing mangels? What is the 
relative value of Cow-horn turnips as 
compared with mangels? J. H. 
Cow-horn turnips are often sown with 
rye and Crimson clover for stock, particu¬ 
larly sheep. Two pounds to the acre is 
plenty and can be mixed with the Crim¬ 
son clover seed and sown with it. Their 
especial value lies in the saving of labor 
and the use of land, and they are easier 
fed by turning the stock into the field 
than by pulling and storing. One trouble 
about sowing them with Crimson clover 
is that unless they are sown fairly early 
they will not make sufficient growth be¬ 
fore frost comes, so that enough of them 
are large enough to be worth pulling. 
They are not as valuable as mangels as a 
feed for dairy cows, and are of more use 
to sheep in the field than to cows since 
a sheep can get closer and eat the turnip 
large or small right out of the ground 
while a cow gets only the benefit of the 
top and the root of the larger turnips. 
They are certainly better than no roots 
at all, and where you cannot make the 
mangel crop a special feature, Cow-horn 
turnips are certainly a good crop to have 
on the side. As a cheap root supply for 
sheep I know nothing better. R. B. 
“Hollow Tail.” 
My bull has what we call hollow tail. 
One of my neighbors told me he had one 
affected the same way last Fall, and 
when he had his cattle dishorned he had 
the sick one dishorned also, and found 
nothing in his homes; they were hollow. 
He then examined his tail and found that 
the same way. He cut the tail open and 
put salt and popper in it and the animal 
has been doing better ever since. I ex¬ 
amined my bull's tail and found he had 
about two inches hollow. I treated him 
and he has been improving since. A 
stock man told me I should blister him 
back of his head. Do you think I should 
do the blistering or not? I will watch 
him for tuberculosis in the meanwhile. 
Virginia. j. f. ,t. 
The horns of all adult cattle are hol¬ 
low and there is no such disease as “hol¬ 
low tail” or “wolf in the tail.” These 
are myths, handed down from the dark 
ages of barbarism when poor old women 
were burned at the stake as witches, and 
they should be abandoned by all intelli¬ 
gent people, just as such folk no longer 
believe in the alleged influence of the 
signs of the zodiac. The soft place in 
the bull’s tail was caused by the tail be¬ 
coming caught on a snag and yanked 
loose. The condition has nothing what¬ 
ever to do with the disease present, and 
such disease often affects cows that have 
no horns, or that have lost their tails. 
Better follow the advice we gave you 
previously. A. s. A. 
Fits. 
I have a cow that is subject to fits at 
certain times when she is on full feed 
of grass, but on dry feed, such as hay 
and stalks, she is not bothered with 
them. She will be eating when suddenly 
she begins to shake and stagger sidewise, 
sometimes she falls flat and then again 
she will keep her feet and it may be sev¬ 
eral days before she has another attack. 
When she falls she gets right up on her 
feet and begins eating. Can you tell me 
what is the matter? c. w. f. 
New York. 
This cow has something wrong with 
her heart, or the jugular veins, so that 
she suffers from rush of blood to the 
head when grazing. Better feed her 
green feed from a rack and keep her off 
grass. If the trouble continues she 
should go to the butcher, as there is no 
cure. A. s. A. 
May 30, 
When you write advertisers mention The 
R. N.-Y. and you'll get a quick reply and a 
“square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
AND 
UPWARD 
ON TRIAL. 
A young man who needed false teeth 
wrote to a dentist, ordering a set as 
follows: “My mouth is three inches 
acrost, five eighths inches threw the jaw. 
Some hummocky on the edge. Shaped 
like a hoss-shew, toe forward. If you 
want me to be more particular I shall 
have to come thar.”—Sacred Heart Re¬ 
view. 
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