Silage
It is about a year since I described a new and cheaper silo made of prepared grass-paper, and emphasised how important the making of silage would be. The campaign for silage had hardly started then, and it is rather disturbing to discover what the response to it has been. Molasses are an essential part of silage-making, and thirty thousand tons are waiting for the campaign of 1941, ten thousand of it specifically set aside for spring silage. Yet apparently the nurnt er of applications for molasses in quantities of over 8o gallons, for which permits are required, is negligible. It is reported that " permits for only 1,600 tons have been issued and very little actually ordered." If this means, as it would seem to mean, that only a fifth of the necessary quantity of spring silage is about to be made, then the situation is lamentable. Some short-sighted farmers are already without cattle-feed and are forced to turn out cattle at night. Others made silage, but made it wrongly, with inevitable waste. On the other hand a farmer tells me that he not only made silage of excellent palatable quality but has also been treating straw under a new method by which a solution of caustic soda makes it into an easily-digested feeding material. With the prospect of a heavy straw-crop this summer this looks like an important thing.
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