It is not a vital matter whether a silo is filled hurriedly in a day or two, or more gradually in a week or ten days. A silo which has been filled very quickly will begin to settle rapidly almost at once, and in the next ten days or two weeks will go down perhaps 21) per cent of its total depth. Hence the slow filling, giving an opportunity for the silage to settle, results in getting much more food in the same cubic space.
Covering.—The best way to cover a silo is to begin to feed out of it the day it is filled. In this way, surface loss will be almost wholly avoided. When this method is not feasible, it will be necessary to cover the silage with some material, otherwise the upper foot or more will spoil. Any kind of straw or chaff well wet down, swamp grass, green buckwheat-straw or even sawdust, will do nicely. Possibly it will be just as well to snap off the ears of the last two or three loads of corn and let the stover act as a cover. Sometimes no covering is put on, but instead the top layer is thoroughly wet down. This results in the rapid fer mentation of the surface few inches, making an air-tight covering for the silage below. The watering is done at the rate of two to two and one half gallons per square foot of surface.
Harvesting machinery.— The corn harvester or binder in its present form has been in use about ten years, and its use is I becoming well-nigh universal in 4 handling the crop for silage. It is drawn by two or three horses.
It cuts the corn and binds it into convenient sized bundles for feeding into the cutter. Under favor able conditions a machine should handle five to eight acres per day. In a recent season the writer used 118 pounds of twine, worth say $13, in bind ing an estimated crop of 300 tons of silage. The harvester, on the whole, is exceedingly satisfactory in its operation. By a system of carrying chains and devices for straightening up the stalks, it is able to cut and bind corn even when it is badly lodged and tangled. The advantage lies not only in the labor saved over cutting with corn-knives, but to an even greater extent in the subsequent loading on wagons and feeding into the cutter.
The machinery for cutting silage and elevating it into the silo is of two distinct types. In one, the cut material is elevated by means of a running elevator of sprocket chains, bearing wooden slats or sheet-iron buck ets, which carry the corn away from the knives. The other type is known as the blower or pneu matic elevator, in which the cut forage is blown into the silo through a sheet-iron pipe by a very powerful blast of air, generated by a fan or by blades fastened to the head to which the knives are bolted. The first type is the earlier one.
Its disadvantage is that to set up and adjust the slat carrier for a tall silo is rather diffi cult. Its advantage lies in the fact that it can be operated with much less power and at greatly varying speeds. A six or eight horse power engine will generally be ample. The advantage of the blower type lies in the fact that it is very much more quickly set up, and that the corn can be taken care of in the silo more easily, as it is a more uniform mixture of the leaves and heavier parts of the plant. Its disadvantage is that very much more power is required and the speed must not fall below a certain minimum or the machine will clog. The blower type is steadily becoming the more popular in silo districts.
Place of silage in the ration.
The question of feeding silage belongs more especially to the domain of animal nutrition. However, it may be said in passing that about fifty pounds daily may be regarded as the maximum rat ion of for a cow, and this amount is rather more than is usually fed. The writer thinks that a silo filled with good corn in the month of Sep tember offers by far the most satisfactory solution of the problem of feeding a cow during the months of summer drought. If the dairyman has in mind sonic summer feeding to supplement the pastures 'and he should expect to do this to some extent), he will need about five tons of silo capacity for each cow. The tables of capacity provided by manufacturers are fairly dependable. Under ordi nary field conditions, the yield of silage will range from eight to twenty tons per acre. Silage may make up the larger part of the roughage, but some hay should be provided in addition. It is now an established fact that liberal rations of good silage are not incompatible with the health of the herd and with milk of the very highest standard of purity and flavor. It is not easy to over-emphasize the usefulness, not to say the virtual necessity, of the silo in successful dairying. Its greatest advan tage in feeding lies not in the fact that anithals do better on silage than on dry corn fodder, but more especially in the saving of labor. The silo ranks with the centrifugal separator in its effect on dairying.