FARM NOTES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13455, 20 June 1907, Page 8

FARM NOTES.

MAIZE AS SILAGE.

There is a farmer in the Feilding district, Mr Mills, who has proved, to the satisfaction of the New Zealand Times agricultural writer, that maize^can be grown successfully under the normal conditions of soil and climate in his district, and that there is no difficulty in converting it into stacked and chaffed silage. For ten years (says the Times) this farmer has been able to provide his dairy^herd with an abundance of ' this. 'valuable fodder throughout the winter. At present the silo, which adjoins the byre, hb*ds 120 tons, while there, is over twenty tons in a stack in the ,field. : Speaking of the method of chaffing the maize'f ojr the silo, Mr Mills emphasised to the writer that this proCess was certainly economical. Silage so prepared was of better feed value than that in the stack, and there was : mu,ch. less True, there was a slight waste at the top edges, but this / was not worth considering- No weight at all Is applied in the silo, but a layer of grass is placed on top, and this appears to form^a practically air-tight covering. The maize is chaffed by an American chaffer and elevator, which carries the material to the top of the -silo.- Mr Mills's maize crop this season was "a fine one. It stood fully twelve feet high, and was so heavy that a great* portion of it went down. There were eight acres under the crop, and the yield was' estimated . at thirty tons to the acre. During the ten years Mr Mills has grown maize he has only had „ one failure. He does not find that the crop demands any particular soil. With him it has grown with equal success on loose river shingle, ,pure sand, drift sand, -tough clay, and loam, and the; results were practically equal all round.! This year's crop was grown on fairly « 'tough clayey land, rather badly ex- . posed. The land was not exceptionally well worked. It was ploughed and cultivated to just a fair seed bed.; Maize, I in Mr Mills's experience, grows best on an, old sod turned down and cultivated tn a fine tilth, so that it may be drilled easily. If the land be harrowed after the plants are up a tew inches it kills , " weeds and helps the maize considerably - Mr Mills has given much thought to silage and the construction of silosJ He kas an idea for cbnstructing a simple tub, or stave, silo, which, he calculates, \ , may be constructed at a cost of about £12, this estimate depending, of course, on the local price of timber. This will give a silo sixteen feet across and fifteen or sixteen feet high. A model of such a silo, made by Mr Mills, and pre1 sented to the Manawatu A. and ,P. Association, is on exhibition at the National Dairy Show this week.

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