No. 5. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 40^ 



cover, the losses during six months feeding were sufficient to have 

 paid half the cost of cementing the floor. 



When manure from fattening steers has been exposed for three 

 months in an open yard, in piles ten inches deep, it has lost forty- 

 four per cent, of its potassium, thirty-two per cent, of its nitrogen, 

 and fourteen per cent, of its phosphorus; the loss of phosphorus 

 being lighter because the element is chiefly voided in the undigested 

 residue carried in the solid excreta, whereas the nitrogen and potas- 

 sium are chiefly found in the liquid excreta. Being already in liquid 

 condition these elements are more readily can-ied out by leaching 

 than the phosphorous. 



In planning the soil fertility experiments at the Ohio Experiment 

 Station, the ordinary farm practice of twenty-five years ago was 

 taken as the standard. At that time it was a common practice 

 among the more careful farmers to grow the cereal crops in a more 

 or less systematic rotation of corn, oats and wheat, followed by 

 clover and timothy mixed, the grass crops being allowed to stand 

 only two years by the better farmers, though many would sow the 

 timothy a year or two and then pasture it for one or more seasons. 



It was customary to stack the straw in open barnyards and feed 

 the livestock of the farm around these straw stacks through the 

 winter, throwing into the yard the manure from such stock as was 

 stabled. Usually the barnyards were not cleaned out until after 

 harvest, partly because of the rush of work to get the crops planted 

 in the spring, and partly in order to let the cornstalks and straw 

 become more thoroughly rotted, so as to make the manure easier to 

 handle. There was a very prevalent opinion that the well rotted 

 manure was most eftective, and that it would waste if exposed to the 

 sun, and many farmers, in emptying their barnyards, piled the 

 manure in small heaps over the field, to be spread ahead of the plow. 

 Some, however, had discovered that manure loses only water in 

 drying, and that a top dressing of manure, after the land had been 

 plowed of wheat, was not only particularly good for the wheat, but 

 also for the clover and timothy following. There may have been a 

 few farmers who practised hauling the manure directly from the 

 stables to the field and spreading it at once, but their number was 

 exceedingly small. 



In planning these experiments, therefore, no provision was made 

 for the use of fresh manure, but it was taken from the barnyard and 

 applied to both corn and wheat in a five year rotation of corn, oats 

 and wheat, one year each, followed by clover and timothy two years. 

 The manure was plowed under for the corn crop, because of the inter- 

 ference of trashy manure with the cultivation, but was applied as 

 a top dressing to wheat. Two quantities of manure were used, eight 

 tons per acre for each crop, on one series of five plots, and four tons 

 on each crop for another. 



Alongside of these plots were others receiving different quantities 

 and combinations of chemical fertilizers, and it soon became ap- 

 parent that the fertilizers were running away from the manure, even 

 when they carried much smaller quantities of the necessary elements 

 of fertility. For example, Plot 18, was getting eight tons of yard 

 manure on corn and wheat, or sixteen tons for each rotation, esti- 

 mated to carry 150 pounds of nitrogen, 32 pounds of phosphorus, 

 and 112 pounds of potassium, while plot 14, which was fertilized on 



