234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



New-England feeder is to obtain food for his crops. A3 

 well with us as with the English farmer, should the ma- 

 nurial value of a purchased food be the first consideration. 

 A very much higher method of farming than is now prac- 

 tised by us is soon to be the rule. The great necessity will 

 be to provide a heavy increase of plant-food. Two promi- 

 nent sources of it are open to us, — the purchase of rich, 

 manure-making foods, and of chemicals. I use both sources, 

 but feel confident that the former is the cheaper source, — 

 cheaper only when good animals are fed in economical 

 rations, and m.atured young. Early beef, cheap beef; cheap 

 beef, cheap manure ; cheap manure, cheap crops. This moral, 

 applied to pigs, gave me, during several seasons, twenty -six 

 pounds and four-tenths pig for a hundred pounds of corn- 

 meal, and twenty-nine pounds and one-tenth for a hundred 

 of middlings. Here the product pays for the food; and in 

 the middlings we have a food worth over twice as much for 

 manure as the corn-meal. With calves, when weights have 

 been kept from the first of feeding, the cost at three weeks 

 of age was but little over two cents for a pound of growth, 

 up to a weight of three hundred and fifty-two pounds ; then 

 the cost became four cents per pound of growth. The 

 average cost was three cents and one-tenth per pound. 

 They were then good veal, and salable for a considerable 

 advance over cost. Yet, with grade Durhams whose ac- 

 counts have been sufficiently well kept, I have found them, 

 at two years of age, worth more than cost. With sheep and 

 good butter-cows, well managed, better results might be ex- 

 pected. I only maintain that manure from animals can be 

 got for attendance, which is cheap manure under a right 

 system of food-selection. It is to this feature that I call 

 attention. The fish used (see table) was the material, ground 

 and dried, that is used for ammoniating fertilizers : therefore 

 it was a manure that was fed. And inasmuch as only from 

 five per cent or less (as in the case of potash) to about 

 twenty per cent sometimes (as in the case of nitrogen only) 

 of the food enters into the growth of a beast, and inasmuch 

 as that portion of a food given that is thrown off at the 

 lunsfs and skin has no assiGrned value as a fertilizer, it follows 

 that eighty per cent and upwards of the food fed is found 

 in the manure-heap. I paid fifty dollars a ton for fish (an 



