I should, by all means, lay the foundation in good rich cement mortar. In building the stone foundation great care should be exercised to get the wall perfectly true and round, and of the exact size so there will be no shoulder to hold up the silage where the brick joins the stone. This would bring the stone work a foot above the ground which is not too high to grade up to. Where stones are handy, I should lay the first six feet of stone. For this reason I should excavate about five feet and begin the wall below the frost line. In constructing a brick silo it is quite necessary to get the foundation wall below the frost line. The hollow air space keeps the frost from working through and is therefore an insurance against mould and frost. Brick silos when properly constructed will keep the silage perfectly clear to the walls. Silage packs more in a deep silo and therefore keeps better and with the narrow silo you can feed winter or summer, and always have fresh silage free from mould. If I did not expect to keep more than a dozen cows I should not build a silo less than 36 feet deep. The tendency of all silo builders is to build silos too wide in proportion to their height. You can lay a brick silo high and narrow without danger of its blowing over. This is one reason why the brick silo is bound to take first place among the different kinds of silos. It makes no difference whether you are a dairyman with ten cows or fifty, you want a high silo, for the man with ten cows feeds just as many days in the year as the man with fifty, and a little should be taken from the surface each day or every two days at most to get the best results. Again, the form has a great deal to do with the usefulness of a silo. For my part, I want a silo as warm as I can have it, and then I will place it on the south or east side of a barn where it will not be exposed to the northwest winds and where it will get all the bright warm sunshine possible. It must then lie around in the cow barn until it thaws out, for no one would care to feed it in a frozen state. This may be true, but it is mighty unhandy to have to chop it out. Some will say that it does not hurt silage to freeze. This is not all, it is also sufficiently warm so as to freeze but very little in the coldest weather. With the double walled brick silo, lined with cement, you have a silo strictly air-tight. When corn goes into the silo and all surrounding air shut out, it simply cannot spoil. The secret of keeping silage is the same as with all canned goods - keeping it from the air. We need a silo that is strictly air-tight, so constructed as to practically keep out frost and of such dimensions and form as to be best suited to the purpose. The question now is: What kind of a silo is best and cheapest? The same rule that applies in other things applies to the silo. No up-to-date stockman can any longer question its practicability. ( The Saint Paul Globe, Monday Morning, March 10, 1902, Volume XXV, Number 69, ) The outside is kept well painted and the inside well and frequently smeared with coal tar heated till thin and penetrating. These silos are made of 2圆 stuff, stood up stave fashion and fastened by hoops of rod iron. In Minnesota and Iowa, stave silos are being put up for from $100 to $125, to that will care for from ten to twelve acres of pretty thickly grown fodder corn, or from eighty to ninety tons of good feed. Now, very good ones are made, and seem to answer every purpose, that can cost only $100 or little over. The first silos that were built cost so much that the practice of putting them up received a serious setback. The silo has come West and is taking a place on every practically conducted stock or dairy farm.
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