A Member: A good deal of barley grain is used in my neighborhood, but I have never heard of any apple pomace being used in that way. Major Alvord: I know it is used very largely, and it is an excellent article of food, when preserved from active fermentation. The amount of feeding values is a question that is very wide. Science and practice are more in conflict in this than anywhere else. Looking at it from the ordinary standpoint, we say an animal must have a certain quantity of solid or dry matter in his daily rations in order to sustain life. Take a given amount of this ensilage, say fifty or sixty pounds, and if it be examined by the chemist, chemistry says it is not sufficient. The German tables would say that this was insufficient to support the life of the animal, and yet, when you feed it to the cow she says something different, and she does live and thrive. There is a difference there not yet reconciled. It is the practical results of feeding ensilage, at variance with the theoretical. It is true that practical men have fed cattle month after month and year after year, and have substituted from two and a half to three tons of corn ensilage for a ton of hay. Careful investigation in this and other States has not given the same result. I think we are reaching some explanation of it lately in the evidence that is being presented of the greater digestibility of the ensilage material. In the experiments made three or four, five or six years ago, it was found in many cases by some of the tests made, that the ensilage did not appear to have greater digestibility than the same plants dried, yet, in the later investigations, where the experiments as to digestibility have been made, we have found decidedly greater percentages of digestibility than when the material was fed in the green state. I think the indications are that the economy of ensilage, the feeding value, is to be found in the matter of digestibility. It is a question which is still an open one. We can safely pursue it still further. The next point will be the relation of ensilage to the labor of the farm. I will say nothing about this, unless questions are asked upon it. It is nothing more than a canning process, and once well canned, it can be kept for an indefinite length of time, hence the advantage of having the silo full of edible material to carry on hand from one year to another, in case of drouth or other failure of crops. There was ensilage shown at the Paris Exposition last year which was seven years old. They have a special premium, and the premium was taken last year by ensilage that had been put away seven years before. Once there, it can be kept until wanted. Mr. Coffin: Would it be practicable to feed cows the entire year with ensilage, including the months during which you usually pasture? Major Alvord: It has been done within one hundred miles of this place for something over two years. A large herd of valuable cows was kept in this way, but the result was not satisfactory by any means. They got the first year nothing but corn and dry ensilage and grain, and at the end of that time they showed that they had been under too much pressure. They had been living too high. Animals two or three years old gave the observer the impression that they were five or six. They began, then, to add to the dry forage about one-third of dry straw, or a cheap quality of hay, and there was at once an improvement in the general health of the stock. That is the only case I know of such long feeding of such large numbers, and that was not satisfactory. I see no objection to the substitution for pasture, during the pasturing season; if we give succulent food in winter, then in summer I would give a part dry food. Mr. Coffin The question asked was whether it was possible to keep one hundred cows on a given number of acres without the advantage of turning out for pasturage in the summer. One hundred cows would require a very large acreage of pasture, and the question was, whether you could overcome that by feeding ensilage in summer. Major Alvord: It is done in many places in both the east and west. ENSILAGE VS. FIELD CORN AND FODDER CORN. BY E. B. VOORHEES. Ensilage was made the subject of considerable study and experiment by the New Jersey Station during the years 1881-1884, inclusive. These studies had especial reference to ensilage as a source of actual food materials, and the experiments included: I. A test of the silo as a preserver of food. II. Feeding trials with corn ensilage to test its value as food, compared with dried fodder corn. III. Feeding trials with ensilage to determine its position among other food products, chiefly valuable for their carbo-hydrates. IV. To determine the economic value of food secured from equal areas, utilized as ensilage and as field corn. (I.) The silo, as a preserver of food, was studied from two standpoints: i. The practical, which has reference to the percentage of total amounts saved and eaten by the stock. ii. The chemical, which regards all food products as materials furnishing definite amounts and proportions of the classes of food compounds known as fat, proteine and carbo-hydrates. The experiments of the station from the practical standpoint included several forms of silos and methods of packing. The results secured demonstrated that, under favorable cond tions |