. Cyclopedia of farm crops. Farm produce; Agriculture. SILAGE-CROPPING SILAGE-CROPPING 567 lerica, Mass., constructed a concrete silo on his farm. By gatherings of the press and of public men at the opening of his silo, and by free writing on the subject of silage, coupled with extravagant praise of the material, he created a sudden and wide interest in the new method of crop storage. In a decade the silo came into wider use and under- went a more radical change than had occurred in the century or centuries of previous use. Stone loaded on plank, earth, bags of sand, screw pressure, and other
. Cyclopedia of farm crops. Farm produce; Agriculture. SILAGE-CROPPING SILAGE-CROPPING 567 lerica, Mass., constructed a concrete silo on his farm. By gatherings of the press and of public men at the opening of his silo, and by free writing on the subject of silage, coupled with extravagant praise of the material, he created a sudden and wide interest in the new method of crop storage. In a decade the silo came into wider use and under- went a more radical change than had occurred in the century or centuries of previous use. Stone loaded on plank, earth, bags of sand, screw pressure, and other methods of weighting, quickly followed each other, until it dawned on observers that the immense weight of the green forage sup- plied adequate pressure for all but the very top layer. Th j omission of weighting was followed by covering with straw or poor hay as a method of retaining in part the moisture of the surface of the silage, and by its quick decay of excluding the free access of air. Later this covering was generally omitted, as it involved cost and loss of its own substance, which .va3 found to equal the loss accruing to the uncov- ered silage. It is now found that this loss may be greatly reduced by spraying the top of the silage with water on conclusion of the filling or by fre- quent treading of the surface for a period after cutting The last and best practice is the immediate and daily feeding of the surface material, a method in harmonious keeping with the essential requirements of farm stock at the period following the close of corn harvest when out-of-door feeding material is in deficiency. The costly stone silo, invariably accompanied by decay of silage around the entire inside surface, soon gave way to the concrete silo, and this to the cheaper and more perfect, though less durable wooden silo. These at first were made in the corners of the barns, double- boarded with matched boards, lined between with suitable paper. The cheap- ened silo proved more
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectagriculture, bookyear
