The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1891-05-26
ENSILAGE.

The state of Oregon should undoubt-
edly meet her own demands for dairy
products. ~IC is to our shame that thous-
ands of dollars are annually sent to
states east and south of us for butter
and cheese that ought to he produced at
home. Many will admit this statement
to be true, on general principles, who
are far from believing that dairying can
be carried on profitably in Eastern Ore
gon, unless under exceptionally favora-
BILE circumstances. The long dry fall
and winter, they will tell us, make it
impossible to keep up the flow of milk
without expensive feeding that will eat
up all the profits of dairying. The only
time when butter can be produced in
profitable quantity is the time when the
market is 80 glutted that it is next to
impossible to sell at any reasonable
price. On the other hand when butter
attains good price in the fall and win
ter as it invariably does the grass is SO
dry that cattle lose their flow of milk,
and butter-making again becomes un-
profitable. Thus hundreds of farmers,
who are otherwise bountifully supplied
with cattle more or less suited for dairy
purpose, are deferred from species of
industry that thousands under more
favorable circumstances find both pleas
ant and profitable.
A careful study of what has been ac-
complished elsewhere by the ensilege
system of storing green feed for fall and
winter use leads us to the conviction that
the solution of the dairy problem, if it
has any solution for the people of the
Inland Empire, lies i'm this direction,
and that apart from dairying altogether
the system is we'll worth trial by every
farmer who has a few cattle or sheep to
carry through the rigors of our winter
climate.
Ensilage is no longer a mere expert
ment. 1t has been tried thousand
times under hundred varying circum-
stances and in an overwhelming major
lty OF instances it has been pronounced
complete success. AS we expect in
the near future to present our readers
with carefully prepared paper on this
subject by H. I. French professor of ag-
riculture at the state agricultural college
we shall close this article by giving the
testimony of Col. T. Cornelius, who is
well known as one of the most success
tul farmers in the Willamette valley, as
to his experience with storing and feed
ensilage:
g In the summer of 1880 built 1. silo
which holds almost 225 tons filled with
green corn, and was so well pleased with
the result that the following year /
built three other silos and filled them
with green corn, clover, oats and wheat,
all OF which make good feed. This year
l put up one thousand tons of corn,
clover and oats, but mostly corn. am
well pleased with the result-would not
undertake to keep any considerable num-
Der of stock on a farm without a silo
and believe farming lands in this state,
especially is worth at least 25 per cent.
more with the aid of the silos than with
out it, as any of our valley lands may be
made to support one COW per acre with
the silo, while without the silo 1t re-
quires above four acres to support one
cow, and any land reasonably near to
transportation in the Willamette valley
that swill support one COW per acre is
well worth fifty dollars per acre for stock
farming, while land that will only sup
port one COW to four acres is only worth
ten dollars per acre.