Fred Hatch Research Paper

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Fred Hatch (1873)

Fred Hatch was an American agricultural inventor. It's hard to picture the farmscape without a silo or some type of farmyard, an old run down barn and especially a tower silo. When you think of barns you also should think of silos. The towering, vertical silos we imagine today, especially here located in the Midwest, are a true American innovation and go hand in hand with barns. Farm grain wasn't always stored in silos; it was stored in pits where farmers had to dig out which caused excess spoil in many instances. In 1873, silos were nonexistent.
Influenced by grain storage pits and corn cellars of Native Americans, the first known tower wooden silo was constructed in 1873 by Fred Hatch who lived in McHenry County, Illinois. Fred Hatch just graduated from The Illinois Industrial University now known as The University of Illinois. At that time, there were few textbooks on agriculture. The only faculty member in the agriculture department at the university was Professor Willard Flagg Bliss who improvised by translating foreign papers and other forums on similar topics. From many of these sessions, Fred learned the formation of the silage.
When he returned after college, Hatch went back to his father's dairy farm in Spring Grove in 1873. As a member of the Illinois second …show more content…

They were expensive to build and often took months to finish building and weren't even that tall. Even though these had interior walls two to three feet thick, they still could not resist the pressure of the kept silage. Even though coated inside with cement the silos began cracking, which allowed air to enter and would eventually ruin the silage. These cracks also allowed water to penetrate and when it froze it had created more cracks. The corners of square silos also created many issues so a Professor King who worked at the Experimental College began promoting the use of round

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