COVERING THE SILO

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1509, 31 January 1901, Page 51

COVERING THE SILO

Various methods have been adopted c# covering the silo to preserve the silage on and near the surface. These include covering with old hay or stray in the cut or uncut form of from one to several feet, covering with some kind of cloth through which the air does not easily penetrate, and then placing oyer this a layer of hay or straw ; covering with boards generally laid over a covering of straw and then weighting the boards with some heavy substance as stone or barrels filled, with earth; sowing -some kind of grain over the surface of the silage and then pouring or sprinkling water over it copiously so as to cover the mass with a dense growth of grain and grain roots. Hay or straw lurnishes a cheap covering so i: < as the material is concerned. Old hay fine in character, such as is found in fence corners where bluegrass has nossession, makes a better covering than liay coarse in character, or than straw, since it lies more densely upon the silage. When either of the two last named substances is used it ought to be run through a. cutting box. The tramping of the covering should also be given careful attention ; and if a few buckets of water are at the same time thrown over the mass, it will help to exclude the air more perfectly. Covering with cloth will probably preserve more silage than the first method, but the covering thu,s provided is. more costly. Whether the advantage will repay the additional outlay has not vet been proved.

Covering with boards, thought at one time to be absolutely essential, has been almost discarded, not because of its want of efficacy so much as because of the labour involved. The benefits derived'from it are greater when s6m@ covering is put on as described! above, before the planks are laid over the food and weighted with stone or indeed any other heavy substance. The advantage from thus weighting the silage will be lessened! by giving uvach tramping to the food as the filling of the silo nears completion. No doubt there will be Jess waste of silage when food in the silo is thus sovered and weighted. The saving thus effected in the silage will be more than is generally supposed 1 , because of the salutary influence which the weighting exerts on the .silage for some distance from the surface, oven though it may not have lost its colour. But the practice is not in favour because of the cost involved. !

The plan of covering silage by strew-' - ing grain, as oats for instance, over the top of the same, and then pouring more water more or less copiously over the

mass is a good one. The heat engendered in the silo starts at once rank growth in the grain. The growth of too ( and root. becomes so dense, as to go far toward excluding the air. And when the living mass 1 falls diown and decays, the influence exerted, for some time at least, is practically the same, hence there is fcsuully but little loss in. the silage. This plan has the merit for cheapness, of economy, in labour required, and of efficacy in a marked degree.—“ Soiling Crops and'the Silo/’ by Professor Shaw.