silage, which entails a very
moderate outlay.

[Illustration: Silos, Victoria.]

Many crops excellent for silage are easily grown, and the cultivation
areas need never be idle for a day at any time of the year. As one crop
becomes fit to use, the land can be replanted irrespective of weather
conditions. For instance, in spring (September) maize or sorghum can be
sown, either over the whole area at once or at intervals of a week or a
month up to January. In three to three and a-half months, during which
time the pastures are at their best, and there is no need for
supplementary fodder, the first of the areas will be ready for use as
green fodder, or for conversion into silage to serve as a cheap and
juicy winter fodder. In many districts as soon as the earliest-sown
maize crop is harvested a second maize or sorghum crop is planted, and
by the time that is ready to cut, barley and vetches or field peas can
be planted to come in to supplement the stores of winter fodder.

[Illustration: A fine growth of Sorghum--Victoria.--An excellent fodder
crop.]

Maize is harvested for silage when the cobs are well filled, and the
grain is beginning to glaze; at this stage a normal crop will yield
about 20 tons greenstuff per acre. Sorghum will produce about 15 tons,
and barley and vetches or peas about 10 tons per acre. Wheat and oats
are often grown in order to be cut for hay, and make an excellent
fodder.

Another most valuable crop to the dairyman is lucerne, which will keep
in a well-built stack for an indefinite time.

(4) _The Farmer's inexperience and ignorance of Scientific
Dairying._--To this last point the Scottish Commissioners furnish a
reply in their report.

[Illustration: A typical Australian Dairy Farm.]

"A great many," the report states, "of those engaged in producing milk
have had no training in the business. If a man can milk a cow, or is
willing to learn, he thinks himself quite able to run a dairy farm. In
time, if he is intelligent and observant, he becomes as expert at his
trade as if he had never done anything else; but his experience has
certainly cost him a good deal. The men who are neither intelligent nor
observant learn little from experience, and their dairy methods leave
much to be desired. It is they who breed their cows anyhow, who keep no
kind of milk records, who think it economy to bring in their cows to the
calving as hard as wood, who depend entirely on pasture for food, who
make no p