1871. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



115 



haps more causes than one, at work which will 

 ultimately ruin the dairy interest." He fears 

 that the dairy business will, "like the culture 

 of tobacco in the South, leave a comparatively 

 barren region bohind it, and seek new and 

 virgin fields for its development." He says 

 that statistics show that Geauga county, Ohio, 

 produced, in 1864, 6,000,000 pounds of cheese, 

 and in 1868 only 4,000,000; in 1864 Her- 

 kimer county, N. Y., produced in round num- 

 bors 17,000,000 pounds, and in 1868 about 

 14,500,000,— a decrease of 2,000,000 pounds 

 in Geauga, and of 2,500,000 pounds in Her- 

 kimer. President Bartlett then says : — 



It will be found, on inquirj^ among old dairy 

 regions and old dairy men, that in a majority of 

 instances, the same farms which twenty years ago 

 would carry forty cows, now have great difficulty 

 in carrying thirty-five, and in some instances thirty 

 even is too heavy a stock on the same farm where 

 forty were kept with ease fifteen to twenty years 

 ago ; other farms are found on which there used 

 to be twenty to twenty-five cows, which will not 

 carry now more than three-fourths as many. An- 

 other thing, these same farms generallj' do not 

 produce as much grahi to sell as they fonnerly 

 did, and furthermore, there has been no increase of 

 other stock, and no more or not as much waste 

 land. Nor are such instances isolated cases, we 

 find them all over our oldest dairy regions, and 

 within our own personal acquaintance we can cite 

 scores of instances corroborating the foregoing 

 statements. 



How can we account for this state of things ? 

 There can be but one answer : the land has liecome 

 impoverished ; this constant drain of the elements 

 which go to make up the butter and cheese begins 

 to tell, and there being no retain to the soil of 

 these elements, the supply is becoming exhausted : 

 and as nature always and everywhere insists upon 

 compensation, the failui-e is perfectly natui-al and 

 no more than ought to be expected, from this 

 course of constant depletion without returning any- 

 thing to the soil, or anything that will compensate 

 for the heav3' drain made from it, for every ton of 

 cheese contains from one hundred to one hundred 

 and twenty-five pounds of ash or inorganic ele- 

 ments ; hence, the cheese produced by a dairy of 

 thirty cows during a single season, will sul)tract 

 from the soil some six hundred pounds, mostly 

 phosphates. Nitrogen is an element which enters 

 largely into the composition of cheese, and when 

 we view the vast amount of fertilizing matter thus 

 yearly transported from our dairy farms out of 

 the country, we cease to wonder at the deterioration- 

 of those farms. It is the same with this as with other 

 bi-anches of husbandry, constant cropping without 

 compensating the soil in the elements of fertilitj-, 

 inevitably produces exhaustion. 



If this view of the future prospects of this 

 Important Interest Is correct — of which we ex- 

 press no opinion — It Is a subject that demands 

 the most careful consideration of all dairymen. 

 And Mr. Bartlett suggests that a committee 

 be appointed to Investigate the matter, to col- 

 lect Information as to the fact and cause of 

 the decline In dairy products, and to try ex- 

 periments as to the kinds of fertilizers which 



can be used to supply the drain of the dairy 

 on the soil. He also recommends that each 

 farmer should pay more attention to making 

 and saving manure, and to the cultivation of 

 forage crops, such as corn fodder, Hungarian 

 grass. Sorghum, &c., to be used when grass 

 in the pastures fail. And for the encourage- 

 ment of efforts In these directions, he says that 

 he knows of Individual farmers who have kept 

 up the fertility of their land, and whose farms 

 Instead of depreciating are carrying a larger 

 number of cows now than they formerly did. 

 This class, he adds, are what some would call 

 actually penurious in making and saving ma- 

 nures ; everything that will add to the size or 

 value of the manure heap Is carefully hus- 

 banded ; the manure thus saved is judiciously 

 applied to the land, instead of allowing its 

 fertilizing qualities to be wasted by exposure 

 to sunshine and rain, freezing and thawing ; 

 and they raise crops for green fodder. Ke 

 also cites the use of bone dust by English 

 dairy farmers, and of liquid and other ma- 

 nures by those of Holland, &c. 



YIELD OF CORN" PER ACRE. 



A few months since, in a criticism on some re- 

 marks that we nuide on the profit of stock feeding 

 at the West, the Kansas Farmer assumed that 

 fort}^ bushels of corn per acre was a low estimate 

 of the average production of that State, and that 

 those who fed the crop to stock realized from 

 eighty-five cents to one dollar for every bushel fed 

 to either hogs or cattla. There is also a paragraph 

 afloat in the columns of the newspapers stating the 

 average yield of corn in Kansas at 48.4, in Nebraska 

 42.2, and Cahfornia 41.4 bushels per acre. 



In the Monthly Report of the Department of Ag- 

 riculture for January, 1871, there is a table of aver- 

 age yield of the principal crops in the United States 

 for 1870, and the price on the first day of Jan., 1871. 

 The Commissioner remarks that "the most notiee- 

 able feature in the returns" on which the table is 

 based, "is the uniformly high rate of yield of corn, 

 as compared with 1869, as also with the average of 

 a series of j'cars." 



According to this table the average yield of com 

 in Kansas in 1870, was 28 bushels per acre, instead 

 of 48.4 ; Nebraska 29.9 instead of 42.2 ; and Cali- 

 fornia 35.6, instead of 41.4. The price of Kansas 

 corn is put at 58 cents per bushel ; of Nebraska 36 

 cents per bushel. 



By the same table the average yield of corn in 

 Maine is stated at 33 bushels per acre ; New Hamp- 

 shire, 36.5; Vermont 39.6— the highest on the list; 

 Massachusetts, 33; Rhode Island 26 bushels per 

 acre. The price in the four New England States 

 varied from 98 cents to ^1.14 per bushel. 



