CHAPTER XIV. 

 FERTILIZERS FOR THE PERMANENT PASTURE. 



Most of the so-called permanent pastures are rather poor excuses for 

 pasturage. In many cases the land selected, and properly so, is a piece too 

 steep or rocky for cultivation, and it is expected to produce food for cattle 

 year after year, with no help whatever but the droppings. Big weeds are 

 allowed to sap its fertility and run out the grass, and no return is made to 

 the land for the food taken away. The idea of giving fertilizers to the 

 pasture does not seem to be thought of ; and yet there is no part of the farm 

 that will so well repay feeding. In some sections, where grazing on the hill 

 lands has become a feature of the agriculture of lands practically worthless 

 otherwise, it has been found that an annual top dressing of Commercial 

 fertilizers has brought up the hill land to a capacity for feeding stock for- 

 merly undreamed of. 



To keep up the productivity of a pasture it must, in the first place, be 

 kept clean of anything but grass. Clipping of the weeds and regular scat- 

 tering of the droppings will do much towards the keeping of the grass good. 

 But we must remember that in the milk and in the bones of growing animals 

 there is going on a constant waste of the phosphates, and these must be 

 replaced. Then, too, nitrogen is needed for the best success with grass, and 

 as we are here making no rotation with legumes for gathering it, we must 

 add some in our fertilizer. For the permanent pasture we have never found 

 anything so good as finely ground raw bone meal. This has about 4 per cent, 

 of nitrogen, and the most of the remainder is a bone phosphate of lime in 

 which the phosphoric acid becomes available by degrees, and is better adapted 

 to the keeping up of a uniform herbage than a more readily available form. 

 Once in six or eight years a moderate dressing of lime will be a great help, 

 especially if the grass is mainly that known as Kentucky Blue grass, which, 



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