— 34 — 
will seldom be advantageous for the farmers of this country 
to make their alfalfa crop into ensilage, but if they should 
choose to, the ensilage produced, as shown above, will com 
pare favorably with a very good quality of alfalfa hay, and 
is quite as well adapted to this use as red clover or pea- 
vines. Alfalfa, when stacked with a great deal of moisture 
in it, sometimes passes through a fermentation, producing 
a hay which maybe considered as intermediate between 
alfalfa hay and ensilage. In the cases which have been 
called to my attention this result has been obtained by ac¬ 
cident, and, of course, without special care or extra labor. 
This is very near to the so-called brown hay ; its color is 
reddish and it is a very agreeable fodder to cattle. 
As to the digestibility of either the ensilage or of this 
red or brown hay, I find no data; but cattle fed on either 
are said to thrive admirably, and it seems probable that the 
digestibility in these cases does not differ materially from 
that of the field-cured hay. In making alfalfa ensilage, the 
silage must be carefully protected from the influence of con¬ 
ditions producing further changes than those producing the 
ensilage fermentation. The following analysis of damaged 
ensilage will enforce this statement: 
Moisture. 
Ash. 
Ether 
Extract. 
Crude 
Protein. 
1 1 
Crude 
Fiber. 
Nitrogen 
Free 
Extract. 
5.90 
17.89 
19.01 
2.31 
2.49 
15.47 
16.41 
46.18 
48.90 
12.22 
13.19 
The decrease in the percentage of nitrogen free extract 
and the increase in that of the ash and crude fiber are 
equally noticeable. 
What the loss of dry matter was in either of these 
cases I do not know. Storer, in his Agricultural Chemistry, 
quotes the loss of dry matter in making alfalfa ensilage at 
27 per cent. The amide nitrogen was not determined in 
these ensilages, and, whde it is known that there js a retro¬ 
gressive change in the nitrogenous compounds in making 
ensilage, I have no data on which to base an approximate 
estimate of the loss of these in either of the preceding in¬ 
stances. The damaged ensilage is richer in total nitrogen 
than the prime ensilage, No. 1, and the nitrogenous com¬ 
pounds seem to have changed slowly ; this, however, is sub- 
