WHEAT. 183 



think, ordinarily, every pound of straw should be utilized in 

 some way on the farm. The manurial value of a ton of straw 

 is given in the books on agricultural chemistry as two dollars 

 and forty-four cents, but, as an absorbent by which valuable 

 liquid manure is saved, it is worth much more than this. 



The question in which farmers are most interested is the 

 feeding value of straw. Scientific experiments have determined 

 the feeding value of good straw when a part of a suitably com- 

 bined ration as compared with corn, to be that of 47 to 100. 

 But it is neither economical nor wise to feed straw alone. This 

 subject, however, will be discussed in its proper place in this 

 volume. 



The proportion of straw to grain varies in different seasons 

 and with different varieties of wheat, but will average about two 

 pounds of straw to one of wheat. So the farmer has about six 

 tons of straw for each hundred bushels of wheat he grows, and 

 if this straw, used intelligently, possesses a feeding value of five 

 dollars or more a ton, farmers should know it, and make a better 

 use of it than most of them do. There is no other country 

 where the grains and richer elements of food are so cheap as in 

 ours, and this fact ought to enable us to use our straw to better 

 advantage ; but the fact of cheap grain seems to have led us to 

 be wasteful of our abundant supply of cheaper material. 



Cost of Wheat Growing. I have for a number of years 

 kept an account with each separate wheat field, charging the dif- 

 ferent items of labor, seed, manure, rent of land, etc. In these 

 accounts I charge, under the head of rent, eight per cent interest 

 on the valuation of the particular field where the crop grows. 

 When manure is applied, I charge the crop with fifty cents per 

 two-horse load, and when I use commercial fertilizers I charge 

 actual cost. I charge one dollar per day for each man and horse, 

 or three dollars for a man and team, and actual cost of harvest- 

 ing, including board of hands. In estimating the cost of wheat 

 I do not include hauling from the field and threshing, but allow 

 the straw to balance this expense. I copy from my book the 

 accounts kept with some of my fields, beginning with a six-acre 

 field grown in 1877. Two acres of this field was wheat-stubble; 



