ENSILAGE.
Mr Edward S. Blunt, Blaby Hill, Leicester, writing to the newspapers on the subject of Ensilage, says that he has recently opened two of his silos, and both have proved very satisfactory. He adds:
‘Two years since I tried pits sunk in the ground without any building; last year I tried bricks cemented on the inside; this year I have tried wood, and am so pleased with the result that I certainly shall stick to it for the future. Notwithstanding its perishable nature, I believe it will compare most favourably as regards expense with anything else. I have used one-inch red deal boards, grooved and tongued, and these I find quite sufficient to resist what little lateral pressure there is. I have built my silos, four in number, partly in the ground and partly out. This may be considered merely as a matter of convenience, as I find the ensilage just as good in one part as in the other. I construct them in such a manner that they are easily put up and taken down again; thus at a very trifling cost they can be removed from one place to another. My first silo, a round one, only six feet in diameter, was filled in May with rough grass cut from the hedge-sides and from under some trees; neither cattle nor horses would eat this before it went into the silo, but both will eat it readily enough now that it is made into ensilage. My second silo, only eight feet in diameter, was first filled with pea-straw after the main crop had been gathered for market, and then refilled with the second cutting of clover; this is all very good quite up to the boards at the sides.
‘I am weighting my silos this year with a press I have invented and patented. I obtain my weight by means of levers: two levers, each twenty feet long, with four hundredweight at the end, will give eight tons weight upon the silo, and being thoroughly continuous in its action, I am able to dispense with the labour and cost of moving so large a quantity of dead-weight.’ There is to be a model of the silo and press exhibited at the Smithfield Show, Islington.
Mr Blunt further explains his method of filling the silo. He says: ‘In nearly every instance I placed the grass or clover in the silo the day after it was cut, and as it was put in, it was well trampled. In three or four days the silage sank from twelve feet to eight, and as it sank I put in more. In about ten days from the time when the silo was first filled I put on the weight. The silage at this time had attained a temperature of from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty degrees. After the weight was applied, the temperature never rose any higher; but, at the end of a fortnight, had fallen to one hundred and thirty degrees, and then continued to fall. When the silage had sunk sufficiently low in the silo, I took off the weights and boards and filled up to the top again; this I repeated three or four times.’