March 1, 1908 
THE AUSTRALIAN GARDENER. 
17 
a 
The stomach of a growing animal cannot 
consequently more difficult of digestion. 
afford the time necessary to the complete 
digestion of .such dry. substances, and 
hence a. large portion of the really nutri- 
tive matter of.their food is rejected in the 
droppings of animals which are fed upon 
them.” This is a self-evident fact that 
all must have observed: in haymaking — 
that the stalk becomes hard and woody 
and less digestible than when in the green 
state ; whereas when made into silage it 
more, closely resembles the plant as grow- 
ing in the field. We all know that dried 
fruits, although good and wholesome in 
their way, are less digestible and do not 
contain the luscious fruity flavours they 
had when growing on the tree, But put 
them whole in,a bottle with their own 
juice, and exclude the air, and they retain 
the flavours of the original fruit for years. 
There is the same one great: fundamental 
principle to bear in mind in the making 
of silage as in the preservation of fruit by 
canning, and that is the exclusion of air.. 
Every housewife knows that if she does 
not make her bottle of fruit airtight it 
will quickly spoil; and it is the same 
with ensilage—wherever the air can get 
at it. it goes bad. It stands to reason, 
therefore, chat in making stack ensilage 
all the outside, which is necessarily ex- 
posed to the air, is waste; although even 
this the stock would pick over in a 
drought, and if sprinkled orer with a 
little molasses it would heip to keep them 
alive even if they did not thrive upon it. 
The least wasteful and most effectual way 
to conserve fodder is in an airtight silo‘ 
or pit, or a good excavation. I believe 
that with a properly constructed excaya- 
tion in the ground one can. make good 
ensilage more cheaply than in any other 
way. But of. course the airtight silo, or 
pit, or excavation all cost money, which 
the majority of our dairy farmers cannot 
afford, and my principal object in this 
paper is to encourage a regular system of 
ensilage-making amongst our dairy farmers 
that is at the same time fairly effectual 
and is less trouble and worry and expense 
than haymaking. I shall now endeavour 
to show that good ensilage can be made. 
in a stack without any artificial pressure, 
and that it is as simple and easy to make 
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as hay Is; in fact, if I had my choice, I 
would rather make ensilage than hay. 
Now, we will suppose we are about to 
make a stack of lucerne ensilage ;: first of 
all select a suitable site on the highest 
piece of ground you can get in the pad- 
dock, because if your ensilaye is making 
properly a large quantity of juice will 
drain away from it, and I have sometimes 
had to cut drains to let the juice away. 
Build the stacks round; I find there is 
more waste in square stacks on account 
of the corners, and round stacks are easier 
to build. The size of the stack must be 
determined by the quantity you are going 
to make. The larger the stack, the less 
the waste in proportion. Say you have 
a 50-ton stack to make ; you. will want to 
build it about 18 feet or 20 feet diameter, 
and as high as you like. A stack that is 
20 feet high when finished off will not be 
more than half that in a few weeks’ time, 
so great is the shrinkage. 
keep .the ‘sides of the stack perfectly 
plumb, not slanting or bulging in ‘the 
way a haystack is built; if you-do not, 
the stuff is apt to slip when it heats, and 
your stack will be ruined; in fact, all 
through the process of making en ilage 
in stack you proceed on just the- opposite 
lines to what you would in making hay. 
Cut the lucerne when the stalk is green 
and sappy, and before the flower comes 
on. If you let the stalk harden, it will 
not make such good ensilage. Start the 
mowiny machine as early in the morning’ 
as you like, the more dew there is on the 
lucerne the better ; in fact, I find that I 
always make the best ensilage in luuggy, 
showery weather—just the time when it 
is impossible to made hay. Then let the 
rake follow the machine, and the dray 
follow the rake, and cart into the stack 
right away. .When you knock off at 
night, all you have cut during the da is 
safe in the stack, and you can go to bed 
happy without worrying whether any rain 
in the morning is going to spoil all. the 
hay you had so nicely cocked up the 
previous evening, ready for stacking. I 
never use a thermometer to test the 
temperature, or bother about the heat. 
I did all that sort of thing when I first 
started, and had such an array of ropes 
and levers for putting on the pressure 
that I was fairly staggere!) and disgusted 
with the work; but all that is now done 
away with, Never bein a hurry to get 
your stack done too quickly, but let it 
settle down well, When the stack gets too 
high to pitch the stuff on to, knock off 
for a day or two, and it will settle down 
several feet; then pile it up again. If 
you have a lar e quantity to make, it is a 
good plan to have two stacks going at the 
arme time, building on them on alternate 
days. Keep the stack well trodden down 
as you go on, and let the inside be slightly 
lower than the outside; then if any slip- 
ping takes place it goes towards the: 
centre. When the stack is completed, 
finish off the top dome shape, cover all. 
ever with 6 inches or7 inches of earth, and 
let it rip. I. have made severai good 
Be sure and ~ 
stacks without any earth. at all, but I 
profer the earth, as ithelps to keep the 
air’and rain out, and puts-on more 
pressure. 1 use a mast and grab-hooks 
for lifting the stuff on to the-stack when 
lt gets high, but a staging will answer. 
The foregoing remarks apply to making 
lucerne silage ;_ maize, of course, is much 
heavier stuff to handle, and the stacks 
are somewhat difficult to build, as it is 
such slippery stuff. I have made several 
stacks of maize, and they have always 
been successful; they have-been square 
stacks, but if I make another it will be a 
round one. The maize stalks should all 
be cut and laid the same way in the 
field, and brought in that way, and put 
on the stack the same way, with the butt 
ends outward. Now, a few remarks as to 
the feeding value of silage. My expe- 
rience is that it is nota fattening food,. 
but it is par excellence a cow feed. You 
do not want to put fat on a daity cow, 
I have not tried it with sheep, buf I am 
of opinion that to those who are.about to 
embark in lamb-raising it would be a 
valuable stand-by in a dry time to keep 
up the flow of milk in the ewes, and 
without which we cannot hope to raise 
good lambs. It is not supposed to take 
the place of green feed when we have it, 
but how often are there times when the 
dairyman is suffering for want of green 
feed for his cows. Nearly every year 
there is some period of dryness, and then 
is the time when the ensilage stack. or 
the silo prove its usefulness. To men- 
tion a case in point :—You all know that 
last winter was the most severe we have 
had, barring the 1902 drought, since. . 
dairying was established as an industry 
here, and everywhere we heard of people 
turniny their cows out; aud yet at Talgai 
West we kept up the flow of mil‘ all the 
dry time, with the help of ensilage, to 
considerably over a gallon a cow average. 
Manly Miles again says :—“ Lucerne 
silage is superior to lucerne hay on account 
of its succulence, as well as its higher 
feeding value,” 
The last mentioned point is mainly 
due to the fact that all parts of the clover 
or lucerne plant are preserved in the silo 
with a small, unavoidable loss in fermen- 
tation; while in haymaking leaves and 
the finer parts, which contain about two- 
thirds of the protein compounds, are easily 
lost by abrasion. Now, this is very self- 
evident. We all know that one of the 
greatest difficulties to contend against 
when making lucerne hay is to preserve 
. the leaf and keep it from falling off, and 
that the leaf is the most valuable part of 
it. tn making it into silage, all is saved, 
EB. BLACKEBY, 
BOOT & SHOE MANUFACTURER, 
226 Rundle St., Adelaide. 
CUT SOLES A SPECIALITY. 
