35 



Chemicals and Barn Feeding. 



The combination of barn feeding as a source of pasture fertility 

 with chemical fertilization presents some points of advantage. It 

 is often asked how are we to keep the bushes and weeds ])ack after 

 cutting. While continuous August cutting will soon kill bushes it 

 is an advantage to gain the assistance of stock. AV^here stock is 

 partly fed at the barn they are more likely to crop lower the green 

 things at pasture and to hold bushes back. The chemicals rightly 

 used call out the grasses, and these crowd closer the weeds, while 

 an over-stocked pasture is certain to have its weeds closer fed. 

 Chemical fertilization will soon show a pasture of clean grass 

 sward, and quicker, if animals are barn fed in part. In my own 

 practice all pastures available for fields have been taken in for 

 ploughing, and I am compelled to barn feed in part. I find an 

 advantage in this system as in some trials it appeared that a fodder 

 of dry matter daily was advantageous to grazing stock. Theoreti- 

 cally, a cow or steer is obliged to take in more water than is 

 required if enough grass of 75 per cent water is taken to furnish 

 all the nutrition required, — 110 to 120 pounds of grass being 

 required. In cool days in early spring and in the fall or late 

 summer there would be a material excess of water to vaporize and 

 throw off the body. This requires food to do it. It is not a vital 

 point, yet one of the lesser economic questions involved. 



Rotation with Fields. 



I am pressing all the available pasture ground and woodland not 

 essential to the farm into fields, and in an eight years' rotation 

 assigning one year for pasturage. By this system one-eighth of 

 the tillage area is always in pasture, and in good pasture, as it is 

 manured the year before grazing, indeed, every year. 



This system has an advantage over fertilizing an old pasture in 

 that new and vigorous plants are fed that are responsive. Also, 

 aeration and decomposition of soil by the process of aeration add 

 to the available plant food of the soil. Nitrogen accumulates 

 under a grass sward and so closes the soil to atmospheric agencies 

 that the process of decomposition becomes very slow. Grass sward 

 then gains less for its annual use through nature than tillage land. 

 The turning of such a sward helps other crops to plant food, and 

 through the solution of the elements of plant food soil opened and 

 tilled is itself aided. In any good rotation more plant food is 

 taken from laud than would be the case if the ground was occupied 

 by grass. These assertions staled dogmatically rest upon well 



