Talks on Manures Part 15

"You think," said I, "that weed-seeds can be killed in this way?"

"I know they can," he replied, "but the heap must be carefully made, so that it will ferment evenly, and when the pile is turned, the bottom and sides should be thrown into the center of the heap."

LOSS OF AMMONIA BY FERMENTING MANURE.

If you throw a quant.i.ty of fresh horse-manure into a loose heap, fermentation proceeds with great rapidity. Much heat is produced, and if the manure is under cover, or there is not rain enough to keep the heap moist, the manure will "fire-fang" and a large proportion of the carbonate of ammonia produced by the fermentation will escape into the atmosphere and be lost.

As I have said before, we use our horse-manure for bedding the store and fattening pigs. We throw the manure every morning and evening, when the stable is cleaned out, into an empty stall near the door of the stable, and there it remains until wanted to bed the pigs. We find it is necessary to remove it frequently, especially in the summer, as fermentation soon sets in, and the escape of the ammonia is detected by its well known pungent smell. Throw this manure into the pig-cellar and let the pigs trample it down, and there is no longer any escape of ammonia. At any rate, I have never perceived any. Litmus paper will detect ammonia in an atmosphere containing only one seventy-five thousandth part of it; and, as Prof. S. W. Johnson once remarked, "It is certain that a healthy nose is not far inferior in delicacy to litmus paper." I feel sure that no ammonia escapes from this horse-manure after it is trampled down by the pigs, although it contains an additional quant.i.ty of "potential ammonia" from the liquid and solid droppings of these animals.

Water has a strong attraction for ammonia. One gallon of ice-cold water will absorb 1,150 gallons of ammonia.

If the manure, therefore, is moderately moist, the ammonia is not likely to escape. Furthermore, as Dr. Vlcker has shown us, during the fermentation of the manure in a heap, ulmic and humic, crenic and apocrenic acids are produced, and these unite with the ammonia and "fix"

it--in other words, they change it from a volatile gas into a non-volatile salt.

If the heap of manure, therefore, is moist enough and large enough, all the evidence goes to show, that there is little or no loss of ammonia.

If the centre of the heap gets so hot and so dry that the ammonia is not retained, there is still no necessity for loss.

The sides of the heap are cool and moist, and will retain the carbonate of ammonia, the acids mentioned also coming into play.

The ammonia is much more likely to escape from the top of the heap than from the sides. The heat and steam form little chimneys, and when a fermenting manure-heap is covered with snow, these little chimneys are readily seen. If you think the manure is fermenting too rapidly, and that the ammonia is escaping, trample the manure down firmly about the chimneys, thus closing them up, and if need be, or if convenient, throw more manure on top, or throw on a few pailfuls of water.

It is a good plan, too, where convenient, to cover the heap with soil.

I sometimes do this when piling manure in the field, not from fear of losing ammonia, but in order to retain moisture in the heap. With proper precautions, I think we may safely dismiss the idea of any serious loss of ammonia from fermenting manure.

THE WASTE OF MANURE FROM LEACHING.

As we have endeavored to show, there is little danger of losing ammonia by keeping and fermenting manure. But this is not the only question to be considered. We have seen that in 10,000 lbs. of fresh farm-yard manure, there is about 64 lbs. of nitrogen. Of this, about 15 lbs. are soluble, and 49 lbs. insoluble. Of mineral matter, we have in this quant.i.ty of manure, 559 lbs., of which 154 lbs. are soluble in water, and 405 lbs. insoluble. If we had a heap of five tons of fermenting manure in a stable, the escape of half an ounce of carbonate of ammonia would make a tremendous smell, and we should at once use means to check the escape of this precious substance. But it will be seen that we have in this five tons of fresh manure, nitrogenous matter, capable of forming over 180 lbs. of carbonate of ammonia, over 42 lbs. of which is in a soluble condition. This may be leached day after day, slowly and imperceptibly, with no heat, or smell, to attract attention.

How often do we see manure lying under the eaves of an unspouted shed or barn, where one of our heavy showers will saturate it in a few minutes, and yet where it will lie for hours, and days, and weeks, until it would seem that a large proportion of its soluble matter would be washed out of it! The loss is unquestionably very great, and would be greater if it were not for the coa.r.s.e nature of the material, which allows the water to pa.s.s through it rapidly and without coming in direct contact with only the outside portions of the particles of hay, straw, etc., of which the manure is largely composed. If the manure was ground up very fine, as it would be when prepared for a.n.a.lysis, the loss of soluble matter would be still more serious. Or, if the manure was first fermented, so that the particles of matter would be more or less decomposed and broken up fine, the rain would wash out a large amount of soluble matter, and prove much more injurious than if the manure was fresh and unfermented.

"That is an argument," said the Deacon, "against your plan of piling and fermenting manure."

"Not at all," I replied; "it is a strong reason for not letting manure lie under the eaves of an unspouted building--especially _good_ manure, that is made from rich food. The better the manure, the more it will lose from bad management. I have never recommended any one to pile their manure where it would receive from ten to twenty times as much water as would fall on the surface of the heap."

"But you do recommend piling manure and fermenting it in the open air and keeping the top flat, so that it will catch all the rain, and I think your heaps must sometimes get pretty well soaked."

"Soaking the heap of manure," I replied, "does not wash out any of its soluble matter, _provided_ you carry the matter no further than the point of saturation. The water may, and doubtless does, wash out the soluble matter from some portions of the manure, but if the water does not filter through the heap, but is all absorbed by the manure, there is no loss. It is when the water pa.s.ses through the heap that it runs away with our soluble nitrogenous and mineral matter, and with any ready formed ammonia it may find in the manure."

How to keep cows tied up in the barn, and at the same time save all the urine, is one of the most difficult problems I have to deal with in the management of manure on my farm. The best plan I have yet tried is, to throw horse-manure, or sheep-manure, back of the cows, where it will receive and absorb the urine. The plan works well, but it is a question of labor, and the answer will depend on the arrangement of the buildings. If the horses are kept near the cows, it will be little trouble to throw the horse-litter, every day, under or back of the cows.

In my own case, my cows are kept in a bas.e.m.e.nt, with a tight barn-floor overhead. When this barn-floor is occupied with sheep, we keep them well-bedded with straw, and it is an easy matter to throw this soiled bedding down to the cow-stable below, where it is used to absorb the urine of the cows, and is then wheeled out to the manure-heap in the yard.

At other times, we use dry earth as an absorbent.

CHAPTER XXII.

MANURE ON DAIRY-FARMS.

Farms devoted princ.i.p.ally to dairying ought to be richer and more productive than farms largely devoted to the production of grain.

Nearly all the produce of the farm is used to feed the cows, and little is sold but milk, or cheese, or b.u.t.ter.

When b.u.t.ter alone is sold, there ought to be no loss of fertilizing matter--as pure b.u.t.ter or oil contains no nitrogen, phosphoric acid, or potash. It contains nothing but carbonaceous matter, which can be removed from the farm without detriment.

And even in the case of milk, or cheese, the advantage is all on the side of the dairyman, as compared with the grain-grower. A dollar's worth of milk or cheese removes far less nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, than a dollar's worth of wheat or other grain. Five hundred lbs.

of cheese contains about 25 lbs. of nitrogen, and 20 lbs. of mineral matter. A cow that would make this amount of cheese would eat not less than six tons of hay, or its equivalent in gra.s.s or grain, in a year.

And this amount of food, supposing it to be half clover and half ordinary meadow-hay, would contain 240 lbs. of nitrogen and 810 lbs. of mineral matter. In other words, a cow eats 240 lbs. of nitrogen, and 25 lbs. are removed in the cheese, or not quite 10 per cent, and of mineral matter not quite 2 per cent is removed. If it takes three acres to produce this amount of food, there will be 8? lbs. of nitrogen removed by the cheese, per acre, while 30 bushels of wheat would remove in the grain 32 lbs. of nitrogen, and 10 to 15 lbs. in the straw. So that a crop of wheat removes from five to six times as much nitrogen per acre as a crop of cheese; and the removal of mineral matter in cheese is quite insignificant as compared with the amount removed in a crop of wheat or corn. If our grain-growing farmers can keep up the fertility of their land, as they undoubtedly can, the dairymen ought to be making theirs richer and more productive every year.

"All that is quite true," said the Doctor, "and yet from what I have seen and heard, the farms in the dairy districts, do not, as a rule, show any rapid improvement. In fact, we hear it often alleged that the soil is becoming exhausted of phosphates, and that the quant.i.ty and quality of the gra.s.s is deteriorating."

"There may be some truth in this," said I, "and yet I will hazard the prediction that in no other branch of agriculture shall we witness a more decided improvement during the next twenty-five years than on farms largely devoted to the dairy. Grain-growing farmers, like our friend the Deacon, here, who sells his grain and never brings home a load of manure, and rarely buys even a ton of bran to feed to stock, and who sells more or less hay, must certainly be impoveris.h.i.+ng their soils of phosphates much more rapidly than the dairyman who consumes nearly all his produce on the farm, and sells little except milk, b.u.t.ter, cheese, young calves, and old cows."

"Bones had a wonderful effect," said the Doctor, "on the old pastures in the dairy district of Ches.h.i.+re in England."

"Undoubtedly," I replied, "and so they will here, and so would well-rotted manure. There is nothing in this fact to prove that dairying specially robs the soil of phosphates. It is not phosphates that the dairyman needs so much as richer manure."

"What would you add to the manure to make it richer?" asked the Doctor.

"Nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash," I replied.

"But how?" asked the Deacon.

"I suppose," said the Doctor, "by buying guano and the German potash salts."

"That would be a good plan," said I; "but I would do it by buying bran, mill-feed, brewer's-grains, malt-combs, corn-meal, oil-cake, or whatever was best and cheapest in proportion to value. Bran or mill-feed can often be bought at a price at which it will pay to use it freely for manure. A few tons of bran worked into a pile of cow-dung would warm it up and add considerably to its value. It would supply the nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, in which ordinary manure is deficient. In short, it would convert poor manure into rich manure."

"Well, well," exclaimed the Deacon, "I knew you talked of mixing dried-blood and bone-dust with your manure, but I did not think you would advocate anything quite so extravagant as taking good, wholesome bran and spout-feed and throwing it on to your manure-pile."

"Why, Deacon," said I, "we do it every day. I am putting about a ton of spout-feed, malt-combs and corn-meal each week into my manure-pile, and that is the reason why it ferments so readily even in the winter. It converts my poor manure into good, rich, well-decomposed dung, one load of which is worth three loads of your long, strawy manure."

"Do you not wet it and let it ferment before putting it in the pile?"

"No, Deacon," said I, "I feed the bran, malt-combs and corn-meal to the cows, pigs, and sheep, and let them do the mixing. They work it up fine, moisten it, break up the particles, take out the carbonaceous matter, which we do not need for manure, and the cows and sheep and horses mix it up thoroughly with the hay, straw, and corn-stalks, leaving the whole in just the right condition to put into a pile to ferment or to apply directly to the land."

"Oh! I see," said the Deacon, "I did not think you used bran for manure."

"Yes, I do, Deacon," said I, "but I use it for food _first_, and this is precisely what I would urge you and all others to do. I feel sure that our dairymen can well afford to buy more mill-feed, corn-meal, oil-cake, etc., and mix it with their cow-dung--or rather, let the cows do the mixing."

LETTER FROM THE HON. HARRIS LEWIS.