THE VALUE OF ENSILAGE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 15, 29 November 1883, Page 4

THE VALUE OF ENSILAGE.

Thebe can be no doubt now that the system of ensilage will soon have established itself permanently in the homesteads of all English farmers who are in the occupation of meadow lands, and who mean to do justice to themselves and the land they rent or own. Since the first introduction of the silo, which is a French, and not as many people seem to suppose, an American invention, experiments on the most exhaustive scale have been made in different parts of England, and it is no longer possible to question the complete success of the system where it has been fairly tested. ,No doubt where farmers have in a hap-

hazard and perfunctory wry dug a hole ill the earth, heaped m green fodder, and covered it with a few planks, the result has been a dismal failure, and experimenters have become confirmed in an idea that the

new process is “ all bosh. - ’ But men of energy and common senses such as Lord Tollemache, have set about the business in a very different way, recognising the obvious fact that unless all the conditions of success are rigorously observed at the outset, there is no chance of arriving at a just conclusion as to the merits of an innovation. These conditions have been ascertained, and there is no difficulty except that of expense in constructing I a serviceable silo. It has been demonstrated that any flaw in the construction of the receptacle into which the fodder is to be placed, will assuredly ruin the whole mass of its contents. The pit must be made water-tight and air-tight by lining with asphalte or cement the floor and walls. Equally important is it that the air should be excluded from above, and this can only be affected by covering the pit with a well fitting platform, weighted with a sufficient load and capable of forcing the contents of the silo into a compact mass. It has been shown by experiment that within reasonable limits the greater the weight is the more and better will be the produce when taken out of the silo. A third very import element of success which was not at first at all understood is the necessity of providing some sort of drainage for the silo. Accordingly, the original idea of sinking silos in the ground has been found to work indifferently, except upon those sites where, by reason of the ground sloping rapidly, it is possible to carry a drain to the bottom of the pit. The improved plan of constructing a silo is to raise it above the ground ; so that it can no longer be properly called a pit, but resembles rather a storehouse or press of a solid kind. Perhaps the most useful of all the infor-

mation yet furnished is that supplied by Lord Waleinghatn in respect of a silo constructed by him out of an eld barn. Across the front of the three clay built walls of this structure was run up a 14in brick wall, and the long-shaped box thus formed was subdivided into three sections by cross walls running from front to back. The floor of each section was asphalted, with sides covered with content plas-

ter, composed of Portland cement and washed silt, to a thickness of about half an inch, and the total cost of making all these alterations did not exceed £3O. An account was then kept of the expenses attending the filling of the silos, which were found to amount to 12s. Od, per acre. Compare this with the cost of making an acre of grass into hay, stacking, and cutting it, which is not less than 255., and you have a gain of 50 per cent, in working expenses, which is very much more than sufficient to counterbalance the interest on the capital sum expended in building the silo, The nutritive properties of the fodder when taken out of these receptacles was found to be superior in a most marked degree to that of hay, and to produce remarkable effects upon the horses, cattle, and sheep to which it was supplied. The evidence given by Lord Tollemache is precisely similar, and he expects that by means of ensilage he will in future get as much fodder for his horses off one field of twenty-five acres as he has hitherto got from two of that size.