Stacking Ensilage.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 128, 4 February 1909, Page 3

Stacking Ensilage.

[ A system that ha.- some good pracI tical point? to recommend it was in- : i spected hy the writer on the property : of a very succe —fui dairy farmer in '• Y.'est Gippsland. who. in addition to . the maize grow:, for n feeding, . net- a; art f .;;r acr'-s for ensilage, j whieh hj" '■■:;;.; green just at the cob- ' ! forming stage, before ripening begins. ; From this four :-.'T- ? he ha? obtained a ! return of ensilage maize up to a? high | a* 100 ton?, which i? starred wholeJ (that is to say, ur.chai'Fed.i within an arrangement consisting of 12ft. high poles. Two liner- of the?e pole? at four feet intervals are erected opposite each other at a width between the two lines of about fourteen feet, while the total length of the enclosure is about 30 feet. Within these two line? of poles, the maize, as it is carted in, is simply laid lengthways of the stalks along the stack, with the end tiers butts outward?, snd upon reaching the tops of the poles a border of fence posts or similar kind of timber is laid ; along the rop edges inside the upright*, to receive the weighting, which [ is simply earth shovelled on to a thickners of about eighteen inches, rounded off on top to shed the rain. As will be seen, there is nothing very elaborate about this method, yet it i? described as being productive of first-class en- : silage, with the exception, of course, that the percentage of waste is slightly more than that in a properly constructed over-ground silo. A? to quality, however, this ensilage is ?o excellent a fodder that it i? regarded as the foundation of the feeding on the farm. The process of feeding also is as handy and labour-saving as the making, the maize as required being simply laid out in the paddocks, where the cows cleanly pick it up and cat it to the last vestige of a stalk.