SECRETARY'S REPORT. HY 



'" From twenty-five to fifty per cent., by keeping your hogs in the pen, and 

 at work, with material enough to work profitably. I make five to six cords of 

 manure from a hog, which is wortli very much more than an equal amount of 

 cattle droppings. I make my sty (which has stone floor and walls, witl> no 

 yards,) the common receptacle of all refuse animal and vegetable matter of 

 every description, with all the slop? and washing suds from the house, keeping 

 the mass as dry as possible without heating. When it is too dry, carry water 

 from the pump ; when too wet, go to the woods and get a load of leaves. To 

 my knowledge, there is scarce a farmer who keeps a hog the year round, and 

 mows ten acres of grass, who cannot at a very small expense, with that one 

 hog, increase his hay from three to five tons per year. This looks like a great 

 story, but I can make it good. I consider your twelfth question of more 

 importance than any other to the farmers of M une, therefore I would say to 

 them, make manure, save manure, a,ad judicious/ 1/ apply manure.''^ 



D. 11. TuiNG, Mt. Vernon. 



"The hay crop can be profitably doubled by draining our swamps, and 



under-draining our high lands, carting muck into our barn cellars and yards, 



loam into our hog yards, and saving the waste from the sink-spouts. In short, 



cultivate less ground, and do it more thoroughly." 



J. 0. Keyes, Jay. 



" The hay crop here may (in my opinion) be increased nearly or quite one 



hundred per cent., by leaving the dry, worn out knolls, which have been 



worked time out of mind, simply because they would work easy, and bear 



corn, by leaving these knolls that have been over worked and half fed, and 



descending to the meadows and low lands, that have received the wash and 



deposits of the uplands year after year, until one is impoverished, and the 



other enriched. Ljt these low grounds be drained and cultivated, and farmers 



will secure an increase in their hay crop, that will more than realize their most 



sanguine expectations." 



James W. Ambrose, Wells. 



" 1 think by a judicious application of manure to the land, and the blessing 

 of seasonable rains, the crop of hay in this town for the coming five years, 

 may be increased one-third, or perhaps one-half. Grass lands this year are fast 

 recovering from the effects of the drought of 1854, so that the crop of hay 

 this year will considerably exceed that raised in 1855, or 185G. In order to 

 increase this crop, more manure must be applied to the acre. Swamp muck I 

 find to be very beneficial m increasing the quantity and value of manure, espec- 

 ially if spread over the yard in the fall, and incorpor ited with the straw and 

 other manure before hauling to the fijld the next fall. It m;iy not be improper 

 to mention, in tliis connection, that none of our most able farmers in this 

 vicinity, so far as I can ascertain, have made any experiments in the use of the 

 more active manures, such as poudrette, guano, &c. It is so late in the spring 

 before corn and the grains can be put in the ground, that corn, in particular, 

 seems to require some more active manure than is usually hauled from the 



