The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-03-19
The Success of the SilO.

"When DR.. Bailey of Massachusetts,
built his first slo and published over his
own name statement of the possibilities
connected with ensilage, he was regarded
as little better than a lunatic, whose ad-
vice nobody but fools would accept; and
when, little later, he insisted that he had
demonstrated by actual experiments that
the cost of producing beef, mutton, milk
and wool could be greatly reduced by
packing green fodder in a hole in the
ground, he was pretty generally denounced
as a liar and a cheat. About the only
agricultural paper in which he got even so
much as respectful hearing was the Mr.
ror and Farmer, and most of them decried
him and his ensilage without qualifca-
ton. The leading agriculturists were
very nearly unit against him; the college
professors demonstrated by chemical analy-
sis, which they allowed nobody to ques-
ton, that it was simply impossible for
him to do what he claimed he had done,
was doing, and could do again and again
and the boards of agriculture and other
authorities got no end of amusement in
poking fun at the notion that rotten
corn was better than well-dried hay to
feed stock on"
We do not wish to deprive the Mirror
and Farmer of any of the honor to be de-
rived from the championship of DR.. Bailey
and his ensilage, but, strange as it may
seem, DIR. Bailey was not the inventor of
ensilage. The doctor built his silo in the
summer of 1879. In the previous spring
april ~ we gave in these columns a full
description of the silos of Mons. Auguste
Goffart of Sologne, France, who was the
true inventor of the modern silo, and of
the modern system of ensilage. DR.. Bailey
was simply an imitator of Mons. Goffart
following his system infinitely. He had
the fortune to be one of the first in Amer
lea to do so, and being gentleman who
does not believe in hiding his light under
any sort of concealment, he made New
England ring, through the press, with his
loud notes of triumph at doing what
Mons. Goffart had been doing for years
on his Sologne estate. 1t may be that
pleading agriculturists " were a unit
against DIR. Bailey, but they certainly
were not against ensilsge. On the con.
trsry, no such novel practice ever more
suddenly came into vogue amongst them.
DR.. Bailey, in his enthusiasm, made a
great many exaggerated statements, and
on the title page of his book he Wanted
ensilage as a means of producing " milk
for one cent quart, butter at ten cents a
pound, and mutton for nothing if wool is
thirty cents pound" This foolishness
excited some prejudice against DR.. Bailey
but very little against ensilage, which has
indeed spread too fast, and now, by gros:
divergence, in many cases, from the sys
tenn of Mons. Goffart, is in danger of los
ing its popularity. If ensilage is evel
abandoned and discredited in this country
it will be on account of the cheap ant
nasty substitutes for the masonry silo, ant
the abandonment of Mons. Goffart's sys
tenn of fine cutting, rapid filling, hare
packing and heavy weighing. No doub
kind of ensilage that cattle will eat ma,
be made by the slipshod ways that are 81
freely advocated in the columns of tn
Mirror and Farmer and many other pa
pers. But already we begin to hear abou
the poor quality of ensilage butter, and i
these new practices are not abandone,
(and it is hardly likely that they will b
now, it will not be long before it will b
impossible to sell butter from ensilage
fed COWS. The odium that attaches +
oleomargarine will extend also to tn
product of ensilage-fed COWS, till the buy
ers will all refuse to handle it. If ensilag
goes down, that is the way it will &c
For ensilage, properly made, is as good
feed, when properly used, as any that wa
ever devised for feeding dairy cows-a
good as roots, and far less costly and diff
cult to produce in large quantities upo
our American farms. In our first articl
in 1879 (above referred to-, after descril
ing in full Mons. Goffart's system, we say
"All reports agree that there is no bette
feeding material for COWS in milk tina
the ensilaged corn-fodder. 1t is the nea
est possible approach to fresh green fee
which has been devised" To this vie
of the subject we have strictly adhere
We have pointed out that ensilage mu
be regarded as cheaper and better gu
stitute for roots in the rations of America
dairy cows-not to be fed exclusively, b'
as an adjunct to other feeds, and as IL
long'sought means of establishing whit
dairying on an equal footing with summ
dairying for butter. Let our farme
stick to that, and all will be well. 81
while properly prepared and preserve
ensilage is a perfectly suitable food fl
COWS in milk, the cheap and nasty subst
tute, that is now to be found ON 80 mar