2Y8 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



showing the necessity of having shelter for manure, providing dry 

 absorbents, and keeping cattle housed as far as practicable, both 

 summer and winter, and this teaching been as faithfully followed as 

 it has been in the former case, the benefits would have been greater, 

 at less cost. 



The course here taken, without any attempt to point out a remedy 

 for the evils complained of, would subject any writer to the charge 

 of " tearing down." To avoid this charge, and to carry out the 

 design of the present effort, it will be attempted to give the details 

 of a method within the means of every farmer, by which the prin- 

 cipal loss — that of the liquid manure — may be avoided. 



The management of manure is so connected with the manj|gement 

 of stock, that it is difiicult to treat of one without reference to the 

 other. To successful farming, it is equally important there should 

 be covering for manure, and well arranged and comfortable stables 

 for stock. A hard, dry and smooth yard or yards, connected with 

 the barns and stables, is not only a convenience, but almost indis- 

 pensably necessary. 



For saving all the manure and keeping the cattle clean, the best 

 arrangement for a stable is for each animal to have a separate stall, 

 with the floor a little inclined from the stanchions back ; and in the 

 floor, at such a distance from the stanchions as to give the cattle 

 room to stand, there should be a gutter six inches deep and fourteen 

 to eighteen inches wide. From the gutter to the back of the stable, 

 the floor should be horizontal and level with the outside sill. This 

 horizontal part of the floor, in a stable fourteen feet wide, will be 

 three or three and a half feet wide — wide enough to allow cattle, in 

 coming in, to walk upon till they arrive opposite their own stalls or 

 stanchions ; they will then step over to their places. By this 

 arrangement, there is a dry walk in the rear of the cattle, which 

 may be kept clean, as both the solid and liquid manure, drop into 

 the gutter ; and if the stanchions are so near the partition in front 

 that the cattle do not step forward into the manger or crib, they will 

 never drop manure Avhere they can lie down in it. Independently 

 of the advantage of the gutter for the reception of absorbents, the 

 benefits of a dry walk behind the cattle and of keeping them clean, 

 is a full compensation for the extra cost of the floor, which cannot 

 exceed two shillings a head for the cattle in a stable thirty or forty 



