30 



N. H. Agricultural Experiment Station 



[Sta. Bull. 273 



When all hay is considered there is some increase in plowing and 

 fitting because of the annual hay crop, and some additional time be- 

 cause of the somewhat greater difficulty in curing the annual hay crop. 



Fertilizing: 



Manuring required a little over an hour per acre. Better results 

 in crop yields were obtained on those farms where lighter applications 

 of manure, 15 to 18 tons per acre, were applied for silage corn. This 

 practice leaves a balance of manure for top dressing hay and the lack 

 of plant food for corn may be made up by 300 to 500 pounds of acid 

 phosphate applied with the manure and 100 pounds of a nitrogen fer- 

 tilizer at planting. Top dressing new seeding and old hay land with 

 six to eight tons of manure gives greater yields of hay and more or- 

 ganic matter to plow under for corn. A part of the greater yield of 

 hay where corn is included in the rotation was due to this top dress- 

 ing, a part to the shorter period in hay because of a shorter rotation 

 than with hay alone, and part to a greater amount of plant food avail- 

 able. This method of fertilizing will require some more labor because 

 of the greater area manured each year, but the extra cost is more than 

 returned in greater yields. 



Table 26. Hours of labor by operations per acre and per ton on 2,52U tons 



of annual hay raised on 1,^06 acres. 



Acres seeded: 



On the 328 farms, 5.8 acres of permanent hay were seeded per 

 farm, and 4.7 acres of annual hay were grown per year on 277 of these 

 farms. The permanent hay yielded 1.43 tons per acre while the yield 

 of annual hay was 1.79 tons. This annual seeding of 5.8 acres would 

 mean a hay rotation of about eight years on 51.3 acres of all hay per 

 farm. The practice on the better farms and the cropping system giv- 

 ing the largest yields of hay and silage, approach a five or at the most 

 a six-year rotation — a year of corn, a year of small grain or annual hay 

 seeded to permanent hay for three or four years. 



Harvesting : 



Several factors influence the labor requirement in cutting hay. 

 Ordinarily the first consideration is the length of the cutter bar, but the 

 size of machine to use depends on the topography, the size of field, and 



