Artificially cured roughages for dairy cattle

Artificially cured roughages may be divided into two classes, namely, silages and hays. All roughages cured or preserved artificially will fall into this grouping, either as machine dried hays or preserved silages. In the past few years there has been a tremendous increase in crops grown for roughage. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration has estimated that one acre out of every six formerly producing row crops of a depleting nature have been put back into permanent pasture land or sown to legume crops for soil improvement. This increasing interest in soil conservation and improvement has resulted in an increasing volume of leguminous crops available for hay or silage. The problem of preserving these crops without losing their nutritive value is faced by the majority of the farmers of our nation.

The artificial curing and preserving of roughages is not a new discovery, but has been practiced since the changing of man from the pastoral stage to the fanning stage of history. However, probably more experimental and improvement work has been done in regard to the curing of such roughages in the last fifty years than in any other period. In fact, the artificial curing of hay on a commercial scale is a rather modern practice of scientific agriculture. The improvement of machinery used in drying and preserving roughages, the need for such feeds, and adverse weather conditions which hinder nature in her method of curing roughages have all entered into the development of the curing of roughages artificially.

As roughages are a primary consideration in dairy cattle feeding, the object of this report is to give information regarding the curing and preserving of roughages artificially, their feeding value of dairy cattle, and experimental results with such feeds as obtained by the author in research work.