SOURCES OF FERTILIZING MATERIAL 55 



food in any other way. Such, however, can seldom be the case except in 

 limited localities where the butter dairy is the sole business. 



Hence, in the great majority of cases, it is necessary to supplement the 

 home-made accumulation with commercial fertilizers. But the farmer who 

 neglects to save and care for in the best manner all the home-made manure 

 is neglecting the true source of riches on the farm. A great deal of the 

 neglect of home-made manure has doubtless arisen from the ease with which 

 fertilizers can be gotten on the market, and over large portions of the country, 

 especially in the Cotton States, there has been an utter neglect of stock feed- 

 ing, and an entire dependence on the commercial fertilizers. Year after 

 year the same crop is planted on the same land, and the chances are taken 

 as to the result from the dribbling of a little fertilizer in the furrows. This 

 gambling in fertilizers has brought ruin to many a fair acre in the South, 

 where proper farming and the feeding of cattle would have brought fertility 

 and riches to soil and farmer. The constant use of commercial fertilizers on 

 the soil, and the clean culture of the crop, has robbed the soil of its humus, 

 and put it into a bad mechanical condition, in which the fertilizers no longer 

 have the power to produce the results they would under different soil condi- 

 tions. One of the greatest values of barnyard manure is in the humus-making 

 material combined in it, which makes it more retentive of moisture, improves 

 its mechanical condition, and furnishes food for the microscopic plants that 

 carry on the process of nitrification in the soil and prevent its becoming 

 a dead soil. Into this lifeless condition much of the cotton land of the South 

 has now been changed, and men say "we cannot grow good crops because our 

 land is poor/' when it is poor farming which has made it poor. If the farm 

 ever was fertile, the acknowledgement that it is now poor is evidence that the 

 owner is responsible for its condition. 



But there are various qualities of the farm manure as well as of commer- 

 cial fertilizers. Manure from half starved animals and those fed on low 

 grade foods that merely serve to keep life in them, has very little value. The 

 quality of the manure made varies with the quality of the food fed. Rich 

 food makes rich manure, and vice versa. The dried excrement of horses and 

 cattle is nearly one-half the amount of the dry food consumed. One hundred 

 pounds of dry matter in the food consumed by horses will make 210 pounds 

 of manure, containing 77.5 pounds of moisture. Add to this the weight of 

 the bedding, about six and one-half pounds per day, in order to get the total 

 amount of the manure. It has been estimated that a well fed work horse 

 will produce 50 pounds of manure per day, or six and a half tons per year, 

 that can be saved. The manure of cows and neat cattle will contain on an 

 average 87.5 per cent, of water. A steer, weighing 1,000 pounds and con- 



