H 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
made his name famous among leading agricultural men in this country 
and in Europe. J. B. Brown’s translation of M. Goffarts writings has 
become a text-book among ensilage stock feeders. 
Goffart built four silos on his farm at Burtin, France in 1852, over 
twenty nine years ago. They were excavations hollowed in the 
ground, walled, and plastered with cement, and water tight. He also 
had his fodder cutters imported from England. He is using them still. 
He used these silos during all of his experiments and failures. The 
fault was not with the silos, but with the method of preparing and stor¬ 
ing the ensilage. During twenty years he succeded only in preserving 
the fodder for a few weeks having to feed it out in great haste to head 
off putrid fermentation. This was quite unsatisfactory and often left him 
short of feed. He cut his corn six inches long, often mixing with it a 
quarter or a third of its weight of short straw. After tramping it 
down he placed upon it a layer of short straw, and finally a cover ot 
loam well beaten down to make it air tight. During the days follow¬ 
ing he stopped all fissures which appeared on the surface. 
Upon opening the silos he invariably found a cavity between the 
settled ensilage and the arching loam, Here was an air space which 
played the mischief with all of his plans. Later he abandoned the 
loam entirely and substituted a plank covering which descended with 
the maize as it settled down. This simple change produced a per- 
ceptable improvement but it was still far from perfection. Still later, 
he reduced the mixture of straw, cut his maize three tenths of an inch 
long and weighted his plank covering with 100 pounds to the square 
foot and found that his ensilage kept an indefinite length of time. 
Here was success after twenty years of failure, While cutting 
his corn shorter and reducing the straw to a tenth of the weight of the 
corn was important changes, he regards the weighting of the covering 
planks as the very essence of the succesful issue. Since 1873, Goffart 
has followed the regular filling of his silos at Burtin Ttnd has been a 
great educator of his countrymen in the new process throughout 
France, and to this may be attributed much of the recent increase of 
exports of dairy products from that country. 
The credit of first introducing the system of ensilaging into the 
U. S, must be given to Francis Morris, of Oakland Manor, Howard 
Co., Maryland. His attention was first called to this system by a 
newspaper which reached him from France in the early part of 1876, 
our Centenial year. He commenced by raising five acres of drilled 
and cultivated corn, that same year. It was in tassel in the first days 
of October, at which time he cut it into one inch lengths and packed it 
into three brick silos inside of his barn. These silos were built after 
the corn was planted and was each 25 ft. long, 4 ft. wide and 10 ft. 
deep. The fodder was packed in by tramping, then covered with 
boards which was weighted with stones. After being thoroughly 
pressed down, he removed the stones and covered the boards with 
straw and placed a covering of well packed clay upon the straw with 
the view of making an air tight covering. This notion of covering 
with clay must have been imported from France before it had been 
well established there that the clay was superfluous. 
The first silo was opened on Christmas day of 1876, all of the 
