ENSILAGE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 463, 8 May 1912, Page 3

ENSILAGE.

(By a Practical Farmer.) PART I. Before thß practical farmer gives his attention to ensilage making the naturally wishes to know in what respect this system is superior to the old and time-honoured method of hay and roots. Now it must be remembered that the hay and roots system is, and has been for centuries, the system in vogue in a country of high rents and cheap labour. Here in New Zealand, the reverse is the case, with the additional disadvantage of our market being on the other side of the globe. Some new method, therefore, of providing food to keep stock in condition during the months when grass is not in evidence is absolutely essential. We know that many farmers have attempted to solve the difficulty by grazing their stock on grass all the year round; but as this practice proved a success? Is it not a fact that, especially of late years when the rapid destruction of our large inland forests has made droughts more frequent, num bers of farmer have 10-it a ruinously large percentage of! their stock from downright starvation? It is becoming more and more generally admitted that food of some sort must be provided for stock during winter. The question everyone asks is, what is the cheapest way of doing it? Our answer most decisively is: Turn your crops into ensilage. It. is the only certain way of saving it, and in the long run, other things being equal, the certain way is the cheapest. No element can destroy it, if you put it up according to the simple scientific laws that rule its manufacture.

First of all, then, we shall deal with the chief advantage (as it seems to us) of ihe ensilagn system, and that is its absolute certainty. For it is a wellproven fact that an absolute certainty cannot be made of any other system of fodder preservation. If you grow mangolds or any other root crop it may turn out a failure. In any case, supposing it is a success, you must have hay as well, and this crop, in most North Island dairying districts, is a most difficult one to save properly especially in large quantities. On the other hand when making ensilage you are altogether independent of the weather. You may stack while the rain is coming down in torrents without any covering and resume operations when the rain has ceased. In fact, ensilage is most accommodating, for with two weapons —your press and your temperature glass—you are master of the situation.

Having stacked up all your spring crop of oats and grass, or whatever you chance to have, you may press your stack, and then several months after, in the autumn, you may flatten the top out again and build up another crop of maize, lucerne, clover, or anything else. This we did only last season very successfully with maize, sown broadcast toward the end of November. Over the greater portion of the field the plant ran ove" &ix feet high. Then, in feeding ensilage you are feeding a partly cooked food in a soft, warm, easily digested state. This means ecoomy of force and heat, and therefore of animal tissue. Moreover, milking cows enjoy excellent health whilst being fed on ensilage, which is more than can be said for other foods.

An advantage, perhaps, that will appeal to some, is the success of the system of getting rid of weeds. They have not a chance to seed. Your permanent pasture is therefore left in possession of the field, if the same paddock is cut several years running. We have a paddock that we have cut regularly for eight years. It is principally rye grass, timothy, and clover. Last season was one of the heaviest crops we have yet had off it, and many weeds such as docks, thistles, and fog have almost disappeared. Ensilage can be made out of any fodder crop, except rape, which has too little fibre. Grass is best: but if apace is the trouble a crop had better be put in, A good fodder crop to sow in October, is made up a follows; — Oats 2 bushels, tares 1 bushel, beans \ bushel, peas S bushel. They should be eood and the land well worked. Ten tons of fodder, which means 8 tons of ensilage, should be cut from this crop per acre. It should be ready to harvest the end of December.

If maize is put in in the middle of November broadcast, at the rate of three bushels on well worked land heavily manured (if not naturally rich) probably twenty or thirty tons of fodder to the acre will be got. There is, of course, more waste in ensiling this crop, as the stalks are 30 thick; but then the extra bulk per acre more than makes this up. It is a very certain crop if not put in too early, but thorough working of the soil is imperative, and rolling is also important after the seed is covered with discs or drilled in. This crop should be ready for ensiling in March. The cost of producing ensilage varies according to the crop, labour .methods, etc., from Is 6d to 3s per ton. It is, therefore, a cheap food and the milk it produces is very rich. PART 11. Before saying anything at all about the manufacture of ensilage I wish the readers of this article to distinctly understand that everything that is asserted upon ths subject is based, not on theoretical book knowledge, but is the outcome of thirteen years' practical experience. Now, my reason for making this statement is this: I have found that dairy farmers take very little interest in ensilage until you tell them you make it yourself and find it the very thing for cows. Then they are at once eager to know all about it And they are perfectly right in this. The practical dairy farmer is face to face with grim realities from

dawn till sundown, and ha has no time to tiddly-wink wtih experiments.

During the thirteen years of our experience we have never once started the winter without our ensilage stack. Each year it has grown with the growth of our herd and businses, keeping the milkers in condition and the mi"lk totals from dropping. Whenever the spring has been backward, and our supply of ensilage has run out before the grass came on we have fallen back on hay and molasses. Yet invariably the milk totals have fallen from the day the ensilage ran out until the pasture commenced to put them up again. We have tried feeding our cows on a great variety of foods, and our exoerience is this: Milk cows keep their condition and health and milk on better on well made ensilage than on nay thing else. Of course, it goes without saying that the material you use must be of first-class quality. Scotch thistle ensilage will not give the same result as lucerne ensilage. Yet the former is greedily eaten by cattle on this farm, and if a farmer has a field of them it will pay him to realise them and feed to his stock, but let your milkers have the best, and they will give back the best. Now, I will suppose that the dairy farmer who has followed mo thus far means to make ensilage this season.

If this supposition is correct, I will assume for the sake of convenience that he intends to make it out of his surplus spring grass. Well, the first thing you have to think about (if your paddock is closed up) is the size of your stack. If you have, say, forty or fifty cows, and are as a rule" short of feed for two or three months of winter, then you should have an eighty ton stack. Sixty would probably see you through, but eighty would be better. To obtain this you ought to close up eighteen or twenty acres. The waste of your stack should fce 17 feet wide and 2ft feet long if a press is going to be used; if weighing with earth then 40 by 30 feet. The foundation should be levelled and well rammed if made ground. A ditch should be dug round with a lead away to carry off water. If you intend feeding in the shed then the stack should be close to it, and •wooden rails and a trolly are a great convenience for running it in. We have always fed it this way. These, however, can' be seen to at any time during the summer or autumn. If you have made up your mind that you cannot run an ensilage press of any kind, and intend weighting with earth, then all you want before you foundation is ready to receive the grass is a few cartloads of manuka or scrub. Next you must get a piece of inch galvanised iron pipe about seven feet long. Get the plumber to drill a hole though one end of it, so that you can get a loop of wire though. Then you want an ordinary dairy thermometer, which should be tied to a piece of thin stick tight feet long. The use. of this we shall see later. If youhave not got a mower of your own you must hire one for at least three weeks, and it woulcj save you labour if you can get a horse rake. There may be delays, You want a couple of carts and horses, and you want one extra harvest hand if your ordinary staff is four. One man is required for the stack, one in each cart, and two in the field putting the cut grass in heaps and forking it into the carts. It is vitally important to heap the stuff as quickly as possible, for it soon withers on sunny day, and the greener it is the better the ensilage. You must start cutting your crop when it is fully on the green side, else when you come to the last of it it may possibly be on the dry side. But in starting your stack the first half-a-dozen loads should be drier than what you put on afterwards, and the reason for this is that you must get your temperature up to say 135deg Fah. as quickly as possible, and if you put the bottom layer on too green and yet> it may be two or three days before the temperature gets well up. But if you let the first five or six loads be "in the field, say a day if the sun is shining, you will probably get, your temperature up in a day and a half. Here comes in the use of the iron pipe befor« mentioned and the temperature glass on a stick. When you have put three loads over the floor of tho stack lay the pipe on the stuff half way along with, say, six inches sticking out over the edge. The end, of course, with the wire loop, for you will want to pull it out and put it in higher up later. When you have done this you can stack up the remaining three or four loads on top of it, and then push your grass into the end of the pipe. You must then wait until the temperature rises. Whlie you wait you should get ready three or four props to put up against the stack later on if it tilts. This is sometimes caused by bad building, but more often by one side heating a little quiker than the other, and consequently sinking more rapidly. When the glass registers 10-ldeg. you may fire away again. Keep the sides straight and the top Hat. Build in regular layers beignning at the outside and working in to the centre, and overlapping each row of forkinls. Cross your forksfuls when you get to the corners, as they will sink most.

A gallon of coarse salt should be sprinkled over each layer of grass. You must cart as fast as you can go for at ieast seven or eight hours a day, if you want to keep the temperature within bounds.

Keep your eye on the glass, and when you lind it is falling after having risen to 3-lOdeg,. to 150deg. Fah. you may pull the pipe out and put it in higher up. You know then that the weight of stud' you have put no has killed the ismperature where you had the glass before. Now, if yon find that the temperature dees not rise quickly in the new place, but remains almost stationery even after 24 or 3(1 hours, then it would be as well to wait half a day or even a day to give it a chance to get up. When it gets over a hundred degrees, and appears to be rising fairly

rapidly, you may resume carting again. Our experience is, however, that you seldom find this unless there has been heavy rain while carHng and the stufF is very wet. What you are more likely to discover is that what you cart one day is scarcely sufficient to hold the temperature in the grass the day before. If you find then it has reached 150 deg., and is still on the upward tack, you had better get help and run the stuff in more quickly. Of course, on a dairy farm milking has to be done as usual.

Our plan has always been thus:— While milkiing is going on before breakfast let one man cut from a half to one acre of stuff according to weight of crop. He generally is albe to horse rake this in before breakfast, or to fork a good deal of it into heaps if there is no horse rake. This we cart in during the forenoon. Another half acre or acre is cut immediately after dinner whilst milking is going on, and thig is got in between 4 and 6.30 o'clock. It is here that the enormous advantage of a press comes in. If the temperature is getting beyond you you can throw over your ropes and pull down the stack. Pressure always puts down the temperature and consolidates the stack, making it a convenient size and less likely to tip. For, of course, if you see the stack has a cant you can wind her over in the other direction.

When the stack gets inconveniently high for forking on to we rig up a platform, say, 12 feet above the cart, and station the crow in it, and it is an important matter to put off the loads from alternative ends.

If you have no press and cannot put down the temperature by carting the stuff in quicker, the only thing to do is to get a team 011 to throw the earth up, and when you have put on a sufficient quantity to hold the temperature you can make another stack alongside of it. A smaller one, of course, if you have got the bulk of the stuff into the other.

Now, in the case of a man who has not got the space for grass ensilage, but has four or five acres of oats, say, ready to ensile early in December, I suggest that ycu begin them when the heads are still in the sheath, for they will be well out before you are finished. If it is a heavy crop you might get 40 or 50 tons of green stuff, say, 27 or 35 tens of ensilage. Now it is not too late to plough up the paddock and put in maize. If this is sown in drills three or four feet apart and the cultivator kept going, a heavy crop can be expected, even in dry weather. But if you cannot face the extra labour, sow it broadcast and disc it in. Roll it with a heavy roller, if possible. But if maize or sorghum does not do well in your locality, then give the land a dressing of manure, and put in oats again with vetches if you can get them. Sown at this time they both do better if lightly ploughed in and the ground rolled. You should get another 20 or 30 tons off this (much for if you had maize), and would have a fair supply for the winter. If you are weighting with earth you will, of course, have to build\a second stack. If you have a wire rope press you will only have to throw off the ropes, unwinding them on one side, flatten out the top of the stack, and throw off any mouldy stuff, to bn replaced finally on the top. Then you can build your second crop on it. It may happen that farmer has a red clover or lucerne field. This is just the stuff for ensilage, and he could cut successive crops off all through the summer and put them on his stack. I noticed some splendid crops in the Manawatu district three years ago. Although I have been describing how to make a 60 or 80 ton stack, I do not say that it would not pay the farmer to mke a much smaller one.

The first stack we made contained only about five tons. But it must be remembered that the smaller the stack the greater the waste. There is a skin of rotten mouldy stuff, varying from six inches to a foot all over the sides, tops and ends. There is raely any waste at the bottom worth talking about, and this skin is no thicker in the 200-ton stack than it is in the 5-ton stack. Hence the advantage of large stacks. But if a man wishes to feci his way up a 20 or 25-ton stack he can do so, and it would pay him to get a press for one this size.

He should get six drums ana three wire ropes. Now, it is not necessary for me to take up space by describing how to lay down the timber for the press and fit the drums on. Printed instructions are given with these presses. We had the fullest information given ith the one we bought some ten years ago and are stili using. We had little trouble in fixing uur press up. It is a 100-ton one, and has fourteen drums and seven wire ropes. The drums are fixed on either end of seven 8 by 12 timber baulks that run across under the stack three feet apart. Round bush log 3of durable timber can, of course, be used, but squared timber is better. On earth-weighted stacks it is a good plan to put planks on edge alone; the sides and ends, fixing them with wire at the corners. This enables you to put earth right to the edge of your stack. The side planks should be joined across the stack with thick wire here and there to prevent the earth from bulging them out. The earth should .be higher in the centre than the sides, and some old straw or thatch should be put on to prevent heavy rain from washing away the soil. In stacks made by a press the top should be peaked up and thatched to prevent waste. The ropes should always be kept tight, for their tendency is to get loose as the stack sinks. That means winding the drums on either side morning and evening for the first week, and then once a day. After a little, twice a week will do. I

Now, in cutting out ensilage and feeding to cows, a little should be given at first. Then as they get used

amount. It should be teased out, and not given in blocks. Care should be taken to open the stack at the most sheltered end, and it is always advisable not to take too wide a cut —not wider than ycu can use up, say, in a week. The cut end of your stack does not then get mouldy. For one thing it has not time, and for another —'being at the sheltered end of the stack ■ — the rain does not drive in.

Mould makes its appearance more readily in siios than in a stack built in the open, there being, of course, more shade and damn in the former. Our plan in cutting out has been to throw off on rope at end, and cut close up to the next rope. This is ju3t where pressure is greatest. It is important to keep the face as vertical as possible as if it is sloping outwards the rain is caught and sucked in. I have no doubt that if a portion of an ensilage stack were used and the rest left for the following winter, there would probably be the same thickness of waste on the cut surface.as round the sides and ends. But we have never left a cut surface exposed for more than a week in wet weather, so I can speak authoritatively as to the effect of such an experiment. I should certainly say, however, that provided the pressuro was still on the stack, the waste at the cut end would not exceed the waste at the side and ends, because air simply cannot enter more than a few inches into a well-made and well-pressed stack, and where air cannot go fungus will not appear. N.Z. Dairyman.