IowaWatch (https://iowawatch.org/2017/01/14/silos-that-last-for-generations/)
Silo on an Iowa farm.
“Five years ago I was one of a half dozen farmers in this neighborhood who built silos. Now there are as many put up each year, which I consider good evidence that the silo is practical and has come to stay,” an Iowa farmer remarked in 1908.
Some considered silos indispensable to profitable livestock raising and dairying. Not only were they practical, the structures were considered an ornament to any farm. The conical silo roof, with its curved walls was said to add a very pleasing enhancement to any farmstead.
Iowa History, a weekly column, appears at IowaWatch on Saturdays.
Cheryl Mullenbach is a former history teacher, newspaper editor, and public television project manager. She is the author of four non-fiction books for young people. Double Victory was featured on C-SPAN’s “Book TV” and The Industrial Revolution for Kids was selected for “Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People.” Her most recent book, Women in Blue traces the evolution of women in policing.
Visit her website at: www.cherylmullenbachink.com
Typically a team of five men worked to fill a silo. Two men were in the field cutting corn and piling it in bunches. Two others loaded the corn and fodder into horse-drawn wagons. One man kept the silage level as it was loaded into the silo.
A survey was conducted of farmers to get an idea of how many and what type of silos were around the state. There were 161 accounted for, 135 located outside barns and 26 inside. Most farmers thought it was a waste of indoor space to build a silo inside. Plus they were unhandy to fill, and they released objectionable odors.
The value of silos was becoming widely appreciated in 1908. “For the dairy heard it is difficult to find its equal,” a farmer said about silage. He said he had needed to transfer his cows to a barn away from a silo when he was having some work done on the barn where he usually housed his cows. He claimed that during the time when his cows received no silage, their milk production was decreased by a third. And they were being used more generally as steer feed.
Experts at the Iowa Agricultural College in Ames offered guidelines for feeding silage to livestock: beef cattle: wintering calves, 8 mon old, 15-25 pounds per day sheep: fattening lambs, 2-3 pounds per day dairy cattle: 30-50 pounds per day
The college at Ames had been experimenting with what they called the “Iowa Silo.” Thirteen were being used in various parts of the state. The average cost of a 16 by 35-foot silo with a concrete roof was between $300 and $350.
The foundations extended three to four feet below the frost line. Hard clay or a layer of cement were used for the floor. Reinforced concrete roofs were popular, but wooden ones were cheaper and effective in keeping the silage from freezing. Door frames were concrete, and doors were wood.
The walls of the Iowa Silo were specially designed “hollow, hard-burned” tiles, furnished by several Iowa manufacturers. The blocks were laid horizontally around the silo, and the joints were laid in cement mortar. Steel wire was laid between the courses of tiles for reinforcement.
Developers of the Iowa Silo claimed it would last for generations with few repairs. They said it was “indestructible.”
• “Cement Silo Men Confident,” Des Moines Register, Feb. 16, 1919. • “Deep Silos Are Strongly Recommended,” Marble Rock Journal, Apr. 27, 1911. • “Farmers Who Have Made a Test of Silo,” Humeston New Era, June 17, 1908. • Iowa Engineer, Vol. 12-13, p 184, 1911. • “The Iowa Silo,” Evening Times Republican, July 21, 1910. • “Some Pointers on Stave Silo Buiding, Denison Review, May 31, 1911. • “Some Silo Facts,” Humeston New Era, Nov., 18, 1908. • “Stock Raising in the South, Humeston New Era, May 7, 1902.
Iowa History, a weekly column by Cheryl Mullenbach exploring Iowa history, will appear on IowaWatch on Saturdays. Mullenbach is a former history teacher, newspaper editor, and public television project manager. She is the author of four non-fiction books for young people. Double Victory was featured on C-SPAN’s “Book TV” and The Industrial Revolution for Kids was selected for “Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People.” Visit her website at http://www.cherylmullenbachink.com/.
Civic leaders in Iowa in 1869 were proud of their state. It offered some of the most fertile soils and flourishing towns and cities. Railroads snaked across the landscape north and south and east and west. It was believed there were inexhaustible amounts of coal beneath the earth’s surface in Iowa.
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