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Silly silos: Part two Although it appears that Deere only made and sold King Corn Silos from 1910 to 1912, the company did have a well-designed product.
At least that’s what we gather from reading the product literature! "Exclusive and Special Features of Merit" One of the key parts of the Deere King Corn design is its specially reinforced top. A 5/8-inch Bessemer steel hoop rings the inside and outside at the top of the silo. And they can also reinforce it with steel anchor rods that run from the top of the silo into the ground. Amazingly, the brochure claims that this "would permit of every other stave being taken out and still the silo would stand vertical and not fall to pieces. This construction ABSOLUTELY INSURES the owner of a King Corn Silo that his silo is a permanent fixture on his farm, and will not be going to staves during the dry summer months and require rebuilding in the fall." The other special thing about a John Deere King Corn Silo is the design of the door and its frame. They use the Harder patent with a "Z" bar reinforcement for superior strength in a hinged door. It also mentions a Brazil turn buckle, "which is the heaviest and strongest turn buckle made." It also talks about how to spline two or more staves using galvanized steel for "a rigid and perfectly air-tight and water-tight joint." How to build a silo A detailed diagram shows how to construct the silo’s foundation out of cement. To help a customer erect his King Corn Silo, the company includes an "elaborate" set of "carefully prepared instructions based on years of experience."
The general rule of thumb for how large a silo to build is "larger than will meet your present requirements, and it should be twice as high as it is across." A size, capacity and weight chart shows the smallest available model at 12x20 with 37.6 ton capacity and the largest at 24x40 with 404.4 tons of capacity. Out of the 38 available choices, you could feed an average of 12 to 128 mature cattle for 6 months out of that silo size. It also lists the weights of the various silos by size in either yellow pine or the lighter Oregon fir and redwood. A solid silo foundation "A great deal of misleading and incorrect information has been given the public on this subject, which has led many to believe that the foundation for a silo should be of such dimensions that it would be fit for a ‘skyscraper’ in our great cities." It reminds customers to keep the foundation in proportion to the weight it sustains, giving an example of a silo 16 feet across and 36 feet high. "…where the ground is level and solid, and where the stock are not permitted to molest the ground about the silo," a foundation wall 12 inches square is sufficient, which is about 300 pounds to the cubic foot of concrete.
It advises the foundation be 6 inches above ground and 6 below, which would take 10 sacks of cement at $4, one yard of sand at $1 and two yards of crushed stone at $2.50. That’s just a total of $7.50! What wood works well? Early silo designs in the U.S. were square or octagonal shape made of cheap lumber, cement or stone. These didn’t preserve the feed well because the designs weren’t air- and water-tight like the round tank or stave silo made by King Corn. "We believe that California Redwood is the most durable lumber that can be used for silo purposes. … If you want an everlasting silo, buy a King Corn Redwood Silo." They also offer Oregon or Douglas fir material from the Pacific Ocean in Washington and Oregon. "It is the only material known that is cut in such lengths that each silo stave can be but one single piece." This can be done even up to 40 feet in height from a single piece stave! "We are also selling large quantities of the long leaf Southern yellow pine," says the brochure, which "is from as near the heart of the tree as it is possible to get it." It goes on to explain that knotty wood doesn’t work well for silos because the shrinking and swelling loosen it to let air in, rotting the feed. The other enemy of a silo is pitch pockets and pitch seams. For an example, the text says: "The housewife recognizes that the can or jar in which she puts up fruit or vegetables must be air-tight; if the jar cracks or the lid is loosened the fruit will rot; the same is true in a silo."
Deere is very proud of its silo business and even states that "five full train loads, of forty cars each," were shipped from the forests at a cost of $35,000 worth of freight. Saving the forest for the trees In closing, the booklet talks about the importance of using lumber wisely. It says that at the present rate of use, the timber in the U.S. will be used up in a comparatively few years — about 20 or 30. Government experiments have focused on reforestation so that "a forest can be perpetuated forever" and preserving lumber with creosote that supposedly lasts "at least twice as long as untreated lumber." For those who didn’t know, creosote is a commercial byproduct of coal tar that costs less than one-fourth the price of paint on average. By their estimate, "your creosoted silo will last two or three times as long as one not creosoted. This means that if a fir silo will last 20 years, which is probably an average, it will last 40 to 60 years if creosoted." They strongly recommend creosote treatment, advising it will take 20-25 gallons to treat an average size silo (16x30). An interesting tidbit tells that they are "authoritatively informed that the German Government has experimented with creosote for over 60 years and that they have recently taken out timbers creosoted 60 years ago, and found them in a perfect state of preservation and put them in use again." More support for feeding silage The booklet also offers suggestions on how much silage to feed certain animals. Dairy cows and beef cattle can get 30 to 45 pounds per day, while stock hogs should get just 4 to 6 pounds. Apparently, chickens should get "all they will eat!"
For further support, the literature reprinted letters from University resources that advocate the feeding of silage in raising beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep and hogs. And numerous customer testimonials boast of the merits of the King Corn design. If you still aren’t convinced, you can see the mathematical explanation of what it costs to feed one steer 180 days with the corn and hay method versus silage. By their math, it costs $44 per head with corn and hay, compared to just $34 a head with silage and hay —Ýa savings of $21 per steer every 180 days. It goes on to illustrate that you can save 1-5/6 acres of land per steer just by feeding silage instead of corn. By the way, corn is figured at 50 cents per bushel! Cost of raising silage To put it simply, "A silo is very profitable and practical because it costs so little to store feed in, as compared with other feeds, and because so many tons of nutritious feed are stored in such a small and cheap space, and can be fed with little labor and with practically no waste whatever." More mathematical equations tally up the cost of growing and storing silage to be $1.82 per ton. By their math, a customer could save $278 the first year on a 150-ton silo, "after deducting the cost of the silo, the cost of raising the corn and the cost of putting it into the silo." It adds that these figures used the cost of market labor, not the economical exchange of labor with your neighbors or doing it yourself. Filling the silo "It is well to keep a faithful workman in the silo all the time during the filling, that he may keep the light and the heavy material thoroughly mixed and pack the silage well around the wall. His work is made much lighter and much more efficient if a distributor is used," comments the brochure. A "distributor" is a flexible extension of galvanized steel pipe that allows the man inside the silo to direct the flow and placement of silage. The company covers the issue of silage settling and says: "We desire to especially emphasize the importance of thoroughly tramping the silage as the silo is being filled. Do not send a boy up in the silo. Send the best man you have. The better the silage is packed and the more the air is excluded, the more perfect your silage will be." Next week, we’ll go international with a look at the "Great 400 Working" event held at Sandstone Estates in South Africa! Text © 2002 Brenda Kruse. Photos by Brenda Kruse unless otherwise noted. |
