GROWING SUGAR BEETS IN THE BILLINGS REGION. 9 



spread in the winter and early spring, and most men prefer to get 

 manuring done when they have spare time. If the manure can be 

 plowed under soon after it is spread, the spreader is the most suc- 

 cessful method, but where manure is hauled to the field a long time 

 before it is to be plowed under it is best to place it in small piles and 

 spread it with a fork just before plowing. Spreading and disking 

 under is often a better method than to pile the manure. 



Either piling or disking the manure may cause a little more labor, 

 but this method permits the work to be done at a time when teams 

 are not busy, thus conserving the value of the manure by prevent- 

 ing its drying out and blowing away. To spread manure on 

 the fields, leaving it exposed in this dry climate, entails a loss 

 from the heavy winds that sometimes come in the early spring. 

 That most farmers do their own work of spreading manure is indi- 

 cated by the fact that on 62 per cent of the farms where manure 

 was applied the spreading crew was one man and two horses and 69 

 per cent of the farmers used a 1-man crew. 



It cost 27 cents per ton to distribute manure with one man to a 

 wagon or spreader and a team of two or more horses ; with two men 

 to an outfit it cost 23 cents per ton, and with three men 20 cents. 

 This variation in cost is due to at least two factors: (1) The larger 

 crews were spreading a greater acreage, and (2) in most cases they 

 used manure spreaders and did their work at a more rushed season. 

 The man with little manure to spread does not usually use a spreader, 

 and the man who uses a spreader prefers to spread the manure at a 

 time when it can be plowed or disked under immediately. 



One man with a 2-horse team did double the work per horse that 

 was done by one man with a 4-horse team, the same being true of 

 three men with 3-horse teams as compared with three men using 

 6-horse teams. This is perhaps due to the number of horses that 

 stand idle while the manure is being loaded. A crew consisting 

 of three men and six horses used two spreaders with a 3-horse team 

 on each spreader. While two men and one 3-horse team were en- 

 gaged in loading, the other man with his 3-horse team was spreading 

 the manure. With three men, a 3-horse team, and two spreaders, two 

 men loaded the spreaders and one man with the three horses spread 

 the manure, switching the team from one spreader to the other. This 

 appeared to be a very quick and efficient method, as one spreader was 

 being loaded while the other was being unloaded. 



A total of 49,570 tons of manure was spread on sugar-beet land in 

 this region for the 1915 sugar-beet crop. At the estimated yard 

 value of 85 cents per ton this would be worth $42,298, but according 

 to the method of distributing the charge to the immediate crop after 

 manure has been applied it was found that 79 per cent of this sum, 

 82031°— 18— Bull. 735 2 



