ENSILAGE MAKING.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 619, 15 November 1913, Page 6

ENSILAGE MAKING.

Mr Ajjan McNeill, a progressive farmer in the Wangrmui district, has beei; giving an account of nia experience in ths making of c. silo t3 the Christehureh Weekl;:' Press, and as v?e consider the matter or tha yi'eaEest importance to our readers we publish below the article in question, it would be as well if more New Zealand dairymen followed Mr McNeill's example and so proved for themselves the enormous benefit of ensilage as a winter food for their stock. MR McNEILL'S PAPER. - Ensilge making—both in silo and stack —has been a good deal before the agricultural and pastoral community of late years; but the practial dairy farmers requires to be sure, indeed, of hia ground before he launches out on an altogether new system of fodder preservation. In face of this, I have thought that the story of my own ex perience of ensilage making, in stack form, would have isome interest for other farmers, more especially as my experience has been attended by unqualified success. On the West Coast of the North Island the grass grows mo3fc of the winter, but it iB, of course, rather poor and watery stuff; therefore, it must be supplemented in some way. Our first efforts were to do this in the oldfashioned way, viz , roots and hay. We very soon found this system clumsy, inefficient, and involving an enormous loss of time. Our attention was then drawn to "stack ensilage," and we experimented in a very small way with garden rubbish, weighting with anything and everything we could lay our hands upon, from a single furrow plough to a wheelbarrow, and finally our little stack was weighted with earth. The centre of this stack was ensilage, though somewhat black, owing to insufficient pressure, and our cows ate it readily.

Next year we made a larger stack of better material, and the following year still larger, with considerable auccsss. During tne last Beven yearn we have made ensilage regularly with increasing satisfaction each year. Our principal material has been grass, chiefly ryegrass and clover; but we have successfully made ensiage with maize, oats and vetches, peas, barley, and prairies grass. After the first year we adopted a simple mechanical idea of our own for pressing, and during the last three years we have used, with the greatest satisfaction, a "Johnson" press. This press is capable of pressing 100 tons of material, though we have, so far, found that sixty tons will carry us through the worst three months of winter and early spring during which period we milk from thirty to thirty-five cows.

What, then, are the advantages of the "Ensilage System" over the "Hay and Root Svstem?" They are many, but we will confine ourselves to the principal one?. First.then, certainty and cheapnpas of production and speed in feeding to stock. It is certain, because you have only to grasp the principles of maunufacture, and they are very simple, and you can make it with less chance of failure than there is in haymaking. And if you make it of grass, which grcws more or less luxuriantly in spring, everywhere without trouble or expense, you have no occasion to vrorry about the wtather, for rain falling during the building of the stack is of no consequence. In the other system, of course, you must prenare your land, sow your seed and run the risk of its not coming ud, or of it 3 being eaten by the fly as soon as it does. Then you must keep the crop clean, gather the root 3 and cut them up before your cowa get them. This all takes time. We have found that by having a line of wooden rails running from the stack to the Bhed, anda long the passage in front of the feeding trough, and a trolly capable of holding about half a ton ot ensilage, it is possible for one man to cut a trolly load, and feed it to thirty cows in little more than half-an-hour. Then, again, a cow can eat a ration of ensilage much more quickly than she en one of hay and roots, and she does not require nearly so much water in the former as in the latter case, whicn meanß a greater economy of animal heat, especially in frosty weather. We have found that cows feed upon ensilage through the winter, entdr the spring with sleek, glossy coats, and invariably "go off" in their yield of milk if the daily ration is suspended before the spring grass becomes plentiful. Another important desideratum in this system is the rapidity with which the land used in production loses its weeds. Everything is taken off the ground in a green and succulent state, and nothing has a chance to seed. Permanent pasture is therefore verv soon left in possession of the field. Nonas to our modus operandi in its manufacture. Last year we began cutting about November 17th. Each morning before breakfast we had cut and horse-raked up as much as we could cart in by noon. The same thing was done after dinner. insured getting the fodder into the stack, we waited a day for the temperature to rise. To ascertain this we nave a "galvanised water pipe about five feet long and an inch and a-half in diameter. A wooden spear head is fitted into the side of the stack. A dairy thermometer, on the end of a light stick is ize::> pushed in, and in haif-:m-hour the temperature of the stack is registered on the instrument. Whan it rises to ovsr liOdeg Fall., and 13 seen to be rapidly rising we go on building as rapidly as possible. As the stack is built the pipe is polled out and put in higher up, and -provided the temperature does not rise above 160 deg. "ahr,, the work of building goes on. but should it rire above this, then presirre should he applied ravci!, by excluding the air it s:ops rising. The superiority of meeranical pressure over the popular but clumsy method of weighting with earth is now readily seen. The for mer plan enables you to regulate the heat of your stack from start to finish, the latter one precludes youfrom doing so, for if; is obviously impossible to keep taking off and putting on the

earth, and the result is that the greater portion of your stack has a largaa mount of the nutriment burnt out of it. We found it necessary to annly the pressure throe or four times this year in the course of building; and it not pulled down thus, your stack very soon ficis to be a very awkward height, and is very likely to fall over; pressure consolidates it, and renders this very unlikely to happen. When we had put on all we required, we built up the top of the stack in a half circular form, to ensure the ropes biting everywhere, and having put on the seven steel wire ropes, three feet apart and a foot projecting at either end, and pulled them tight with the drums and levers on i both sides of the stack, we dug a ' ditch round to carry off the juice and 1 water in wet weather. If the stack ! is raked up and thatched there is of J course far less waste on the top. We ! generally content ourselveß with peaki ing up alone, which seems to carry off most of the rain. As regards waste, there should be very little in a wellbuilt stack, except at the top. In building salt should be sprinkled on every layer, and care should be taken to kaep the suface of the stack as flat as possible. A crop of grass that would yidd two tons of hay to the acre will give from four to five tons of ensilage. And a fifty-ton stack should be made 19ft by 17ft at the base. Any crop can be made into ensliage, with the exception of rape and cabbage, which have not fibre enough to resist the pressure. Sour ensilage made in pits or silos, is not adapted for feeding to dairy stock as it is very liable, unless great care is exercised to taint the milk. -- Reprinted from N.Z. Dairyman.