29 



BULLETIN OF 



Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THE USE OF BARNYARD MANURE. 



By Chas. Wellington, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Agricultural 



College. 



In these latter days of human progress every department of 

 activity has become complex, and is with every day becoming more 

 so. That most important and fundamental of all callings, farm- 

 ing, offers no exception here. Of all the factors that enter into his 

 business, over which he has control, barnyard manure is at once the 

 most valuable and the most abused by the farmer. It is the most 

 valuable, because, although a waste product of all general and 

 stock farming, it nevertheless contains the three most costly ele- 

 ments of plant food (nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid), and, 

 what is more important, it is the only entire all-round fertilizer 

 known. It is the most abused, because the farmer either know- 

 ingly or unknowingly handles it wastefully, and largely allows it to 

 become valueless before reaching the growing crop. 



Professor Roberts allows $250, at least, as the value of the ma- 

 nure for seven months on a small farm with four horses, twenty cows, 

 fifty sheep and ten pigs. By the present wasteful management, 

 one-third of this, $83.33, is on the average lost to the farmer. 

 The annual value of this material for the United States is placed 

 at $2,071,400,000. One-third, or $690,466,666 is lost annually to 

 the farmers of this country. Could any other national business be 

 carried on with such a loss, and be made to pay ? This is only one 

 of the much-talked-of " wastes of the farm ," and yet this alone fur- 

 nishes abundant proof th&t farming does jmy. For that large num- 

 ber of so-called "farmers" who knowingly waste their barnyard 

 manure there is positively no help. They also waste at every 

 point ; they are not business men, and therefore they are not farm- 

 ers. For true farmers who are at their business for what there is 

 in it, and for all that hard, persistent thinking and careful practice 

 can make it, who unknoivingly waste barnyard manure, here is an 



