Manure Saving. 143 



farmer in our section can longer afford to .let this quietly drain 

 away through cracks in a plank floor or soak into an earth floor. 

 The waste is little by little, but quite a large sum in a year on 

 many farms . The best floor for a basement stable to-day is cement . 

 This saves every drop. It need not cost very much. A farmer 

 near here lately built a very large basement barn. Perhaps fifty 

 head of horses and cows are kept in the basement. He drew 

 gravel himself, bought cement, and mixed and laid it all over the 

 entire ground floor, with a gutter behind the cows, and it gives 

 complete satisfaction. I have seen a number of other barns 

 where the floor was laid in the same way by the farmer. One 

 had better get a good mason to advise in the matter of mixing, 

 and, perhaps, show them how to mix and lay, unless they have 

 had some experience. In a general way, I will say, I would 

 make floor 2}^ to 3 inches thick, the latter, I believe, being 

 enough for horses even. I would use clean gravel and sand with 

 no soil in it. I would lay right on the solid, settled earth, with- 

 out any base of stones, as was once thought necessary. Of course, 

 the floor must be dry and well drained, and it must be solid. If 

 it settles in spots it may crack the cement. I have seen one 

 thus injured. I would use best Portland cement myself. It 

 costs more, but I believe will be cheapest in the eAd. I have 

 seen good gutters behind cows laid of this grouting of gravel and 

 sand and cement. The corners were rounded off a little. I laid 

 a floor in my horse stable of pavement blocks (burned clay) bed- 

 ded in cement (Portland) and cement in all joints. It is six 

 inches thick. If a roof is kept over it', it will be there after I am 

 forgotten, but it was unnecessarily costly. It cost, with expert 

 labor hired to lay it, $20 per box stall of about ten feet by twelve. 

 I could have built a floor of gravel and cement for half that, and 

 good enough. 



But a cement floor costs money, even if one does the work 

 himself: I might tell you how we did at first, when we had no 

 money. That first winter when I came on the farm and had 

 those nine cows, I fixed to save all my manure. I knew it was 

 farm food, and my farm was sadly hungry. I went to the edge 

 of swamp where there was some tough, blue clay, and dug out 

 some, and drew up and spread over stable floor. Then I wet it 

 slightly and tramped and pounded it puddled it until it would 

 hold water perfectly, and then I covered it with old boards to 

 shovel on and keep cows from displacing it. This was a pretty 

 crude floor, but it saved the liquid manure all the same. The 

 horse stable had a plank floor, in fairly good order, and I got 

 some pine boards jointed and nailed down crosswise, so they 

 practically prevented any waste of liquid when swelled, by keep- 

 ing horses well bedded. But the clay floor was not very nice or 

 lasting. It would dry up and crack in summer. My first ad- 

 vance was to build a floor for cows of lumber and gas tar. This 



