422 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



of food in yard or stall, when the manure is thrown into the 

 yard. When a crop is thus fed off upon the land, or when 

 other food is brought and fed upon a field, during cool or 

 damp weather, all droppings are saved, and all urine is at 

 once absorbed by the soil, and stored as plant food noth- 

 ing is lost. It is in such applications of manure that we 

 may see an effect to warrant the prices mentioned for the 

 fertilizing constituents of foods. 



Sheep are the best animals for making an even dis- 

 tribution over the soil of the fertilizing ingredients of 

 excrement. 



AN EXPERIMENT. 



To test the comparative effect of feeding a definite quan- 

 tity of food to sheep upon the land, or applying the ma- 

 nure made by sheep in winter under a shed, from the same 

 kind of food, the author confined 50 large sheep between 

 hurdles, upon 25 rods of ground, for three days, commenc- 

 ing early in June, and feeding each sheep 20 Ibs. per day of 

 green clover, cut before blossoming, in racks; and the parts 

 of stalks not eaten at first were fed each day in troughs, 

 with M lb. of corn-meal and a pinch of salt, to each sheep, 

 spread over them. Thus treated, the clover was all eaten. 

 At the end of three days, they were moved along upon an 

 equal space adjoining ; so that each rod of land received 

 the droppings from 120 Ibs. of green clover and 4K Ibs. of 

 corn-meal in six days. This was equal to 4.06 Ibs. of dry 

 food to each sheep per day the clover having 83 per cent, 

 of water each rod thus receiving the excrement from 24.36 

 Ibs. of dry food ; or an acre received 3,264 Ibs. of dry clover, 

 and 633 Ibs. of dry substance of corn-meal. This would 

 yield, approximately, in the excrement 90 Ibs. of nitrogen, 

 84 Ibs. of potash, and 22 Ibs. of phosphoric acid to the 

 acre. The sheep were moved until one acre had been gone 

 over. The land had been in oats the previous year, with- 

 out manure, and not seeded. Fifty sheep, of about the 



