ENSILAGE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1064, 6 February 1883, Page 2

ENSILAGE.

Our British agriculturists (writes the Loudon correspondent of the Austnv lasian), are all agog on ‘ensilage.’ The practice is old enough, and hails from Belgium, not America as most people seem to imagine. It, has also been in use both in Hungary and many parts of Russia for more than a century, but English fanners have evidently heard of it for the first time. 1 Ensilage’ consists in preserving, any sort of green fodder in a kind of pit. The latter is walled and concreted, and the fodder is packed in it in the green state, and slightly salted. Afterwards the pit is made as air-tight and water tight as possible. The food so preserved is good for winter use, and the cattle are said to be very fond of it, We hive a goodly number of agriculturists who are always pleased to hear or tell of some new thing, and are wealthy enough to indulge in the luxury of experiment. Such people are now going in for ‘ ensilage.’ But, as Sir John Lawes has pointed out, the countries where ‘ ensilage’ is used for cattle food are all con- ■ tinental. They cannot grow succulent turnips, beet, mangel and cabbages through the winter as we can, and therefore have not our advantages to fall back upon. Cattle must surely thrive better on our fresh succulent food than on ‘ensilage.’ Besides, it has been shown that the latter loses much of its nutritive character in the act of preparation.

Green maize (which never ripens with us) might, perhaps, be advantageously used for ‘ensilage,’ as it; is rich in saccharine.