168 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



It has been the policy of too many of us to feed cattle or 

 hogs when the live stock market was high and sell grain and hay 

 when the cattle market was low, and according to the old point of 

 view this was good business. With the constructive idea of soil 

 handling we continue to feed regardless of the market, the price 

 of stock affecting our farming operations only in the selection of 

 the kind of stock to feed, whether we shall specialize on sheep, for 

 instance, or on hogs, or on cattle. In other words, we must feed 

 as a policy from which we never err, although markets and various 

 other conditions will determine whether we shall handle one line 

 of stock continually as a pure bred line, or whether we shall handle 

 several lines, whether we shall finish animals or sell young stuff. 

 All these things must be determined by conditions, and herein lies 

 the opportunity for the farmer to succeed or fail depending on his 

 business judgment and his ability; but the policy to keep his grain 

 and roughage on the farm should be practically ironclad, after he 

 has once become so established financially as to make this possible. 



THE SAVING OF MANURE. 



In order to maintain soil fertility most readily we must give 

 more careful attention to the saving of farm manures. Too often 

 where a system of feeding is practical the manure is allowed to 

 lie around in the lot until a large share of its fertilizing constitu- 

 ents have washed away and on hundreds of farms the manure 

 piles are entirely ignored. The manure spreader is as necessary 

 on a well regulated farm as is the binder or the mower. The old 

 method of hand-scattering manure on the thin spots only must 

 pass. Manure must be made to go farther and the policy should 

 be to cover every acre uniformly once in the rotation. There are 

 only two methods of doing this economically; one is to allow the 

 animals themselves to scatter it by feeding directly on the land, 

 a method that can be adopted with only partial success, and the 

 other is by means of a manure spreader. There are three im- 

 portant reasons, in my opinion, why we should adopt a manure 

 spreader as a necessary implement on the modern farm; first, 

 manure spread evenly and rather thin over a large area brings a 

 greater return ton for ton than when spread irregularly and 

 heavily; second, when a man owns a manure spreader he is much 

 more careful about saving manure and putting it on the fields at 

 the proper time; and third, the spreader saves labor. Most farm- 

 ers consider the last reason very important. In my opinion it is 

 the least important. 



