ENSILAGE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1715, 21 November 1887, Page 3

ENSILAGE.

A correspondent writes as follows : — As farmers are yearly finding the greater need of winter feed for their stock, and the drawing from their lands the utmoet of their producing capacity, ensiling of green feed of all kinds during the summer months when it is of least value — indeed, often going to waste for the want of a remunerative price for efcook— Bboring It up for the season of Bcarcity, should be widely adopted throughout the colonies as it is now done both m England and the United Statoa. Mr Thorold Rogers, of Oxford, after personal investigation, B»ya : "The boII aud climate of the States not being favorable for root crops, under the old system store cattle and milch cows needed to be fed on hay with oil cake, etc., and I was frequently told that it took the produce of two and a half acres to feed a cow, and if a profitable supply of milk was to be pot, she should also have some cix qaarts of oroahed cats or their equivalent daily." Some persona also stated that tinder tho new system of ensilage, tho produoe of half an acre of the same land with two qaarts of some albuminoid food, would koop the animal ill tho year round m belter condition, md with a far higher yield of milk. No one, they concluded, who once tried Bneilage would go back to tho old ways. Grass, and especially a f termath, is a favorite material fo? ensilage ; Indeed, there ia nothing which cattle will oat except roots, which fa not put into these save-ftlls and stcrcd. The cost of cutting and storing green forage ia not nearly so much- as that which is expended In making hay, especially when the weather is capricious, and then the product 1b infinitely more valuable. Aa an illustration of the extraordinary increase of.produotlon and food supply from the adoption of the system, Oolonol Wclcott told me that he was enabled by ensilage to keep four times the number of cows on the same acreage that he had been able to keep when he gave his animals green food m Bummer and hay m winter. Sheep and pi^B, even poultry, have been fed on it with results as uniformly favorable." 11 It ia a curious fact,", says an American journal, " that while many scientific men, numerous professors m agricultural colleges, and eminent ohemlata denounce the system as unworthy tho time and attention of the agriculturist, yet hundreds of practical farmcra have, notwithstanding, prooeeded to bnild ailoß, and store fodder crops and feed eneilngo to their live stock | with almoßt unvarying euccess." Then '•the dairyman m particular will never produce a satisfactory yield from hla herd upon pasture alone, and ho cannot too soon consider the best method to produce a uniform yield from hie dairy throughout the season." It is added, that " one considerable advantage m the use oi ensilage m the early date at which tru lands can be entered on for cultivation ol the following crops, aB the best time foi cutting is early m the flowering stage d the plants."