84 



ca. 4 cm below the lower surface of the concrete walks. Subsequent 

 heavy rains flooded the farm and the manure collection areas (Figure 

 15). It was decided to add wood chips to all manure collection areas 

 to help dry and texturize the manure. The treatment schedule is shown 

 below: 



House Chips 



1 not added 



2 added to rear of house only 



3 added to entire house 



4 not added 



The level of the chips before tilling is shown in Figure 16. After 

 chips were added, all houses were tilled twice to stir in the chips and 

 make moisture levels more uniform when the pretreatment manure samples 

 were taken. House 1 was tilled on Mondays, house 3 on Mondays and 

 Fridays, and house 4 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. House 2 was 

 not ti 1 led. 



On Fridays, one 360-ml manure sample was collected from the center 

 of each quarter of each house. At the laboratory, 30 g of each sample 

 were weighed on an electric pan balance and dried for 36 hr on Berlese 

 funnels. Samples were reweighed and the dry weights subtracted from 

 30 g. These differences were converted to per cents to arrive at the 

 moisture contents of the samples. 



Resul ts. The results from the manure samples dried for moisture 

 content are shown in Table 3 and Figure 17. 



Moisture levels were reduced in all treatments except 2-B, where 

 no chips were added to the manure and the manure was not tilled. The 

 moisture level in this treatment increased significantly from 49-35 to 

 64.32% and constituted a net moisture increase of 14.97%. All other 

 changes in moisture levels were nonsignificant. 



