The Brinkley argus., 1918-07-12
MAKE PROVISION ID
 HANDLE CORN CROP
Best Way To Utilize the Entire Plant On the Farm Is By Max
 ing Plenty of SiIage.
By J. H. Mcleod, Livestock Specialist, Extension Division, University
 of Arkansas.


 With the prospect of producing a large corn crop this year, Arkansas people should make provision for handling this crop in the best possible manner. It is true there will be money in the grain and that many will pull fodder, but would it not be an ex- cellent plan to utilize the entire corn plant and produce the most meat and milk at the cheapest price? The best way to utilize the entire plant on the farm is by making silage. Silos have come into general use in the last 30 years in every section in the United States where livestock growing is profitable and silage is universally recognized as a good and cheap feed for farm ! animals, .-
 l Since the price of grain will prob ably be very high, some may desire to use less corn in the silage, and Sherever alfalfa and other legumes Can be produced this can easily be done by combining corn or sorghum silage with alfalfa or legume hay; a very cheap feed for both meat and milk production can thus be secured. Naturally, this combination, silage fed without grain. however, does not give the greatest flow of milk or tbe best quality of meat. However, some of the most economically produced meat that has been put on the market this year was fed upon the silage and hay ration.
 Silos also offer cheap storage since corn cured in the field will occupy ten times as much space in the barn as in the.silo.
 Silos are also profitable. Livestock furnish a sure market for the corn tin form of silage) and at the same time they help keep up the fertility of the soil by the fertility they return in the form of manure. It is a significant fact that wherever livestock are kept rotation is more generally practiced and the fertility of the land better maintained.
 iS cotton system of farming we will i'll lime deplete the richest soils of our state Reason teaches us that we can not continually take fertility from the soil and never return any. Expert ments have also been performed which back our judgment in this matter. Such an experiment covering a period of 50 years was carried on by Illinois Experiment Station. The summary of the experiment is given below:
 "At this station the yield on a typi- cal soil has decreased under continu ous corn raising from 70 bushels to the acre to 27 bushels to the acre dur ing this period, while under system of crop rotation and proper fertiliza- ton the yield on a portion of the same field has been increased during the same period to 96 bushels per acre. These yields are not of certain year, but averages of three-year periods. The 96 bushels were obtained in a three-year rotation in which corn was followed by oats in which clover was sown: the next year clover alone, fol- lowed by corn again. Stable manure with commercial fertilizers was ap- piled to the clover ground to be plow- ed under for corn. The difference m the yields obtained between the rota- ton system where fertility was ap- piled and the straight corn cropping without fertility was 60 bushels per acre or over two and half times that of the system Of continuous corn rais- ing. A large proportion of this differ ence in yield is clear profit as tho actual expense of producing the @6 bushes 10 the acre was but little moro t.an in growing the 27. If the results of these two yields were fig ured down 10 a nicety and the value of the land determined by the net in come. it would be found that the we'll formed acres would be worth an enor- mous price as compared With gift of the land that produced the smaller yield"
 II is not the intention of the writer of this article to. leave the impression that every man who raises corn should have a silo, but there is no doubt but what a silo will pay man who keeps as many as Is head of beef cattle and