106 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATIOiN. 



dry ;mmmers, we have only good grass in the spring and 

 fall and the land is too valuable to put good tillable iields 

 into indifferent pastures when more feed can be raised and 

 more cows kept by other and more approved methods. 



Concentrated manures or commercial fertilizers are out 

 of the question. They are too costly to be profitably used in 

 raising feed for cows. As far as the writer is aware, their 

 use in oar State is seldom attended with satisfactory results. 

 Some of them contain all of the important ingredients needed 

 in the soil for the growth of the plant; these are called com- 

 plete fertilizers. Others contain only one or two, or three, and 

 are intended to be applied to such crops as have them largely 

 in their composition or on lands that are deficient in only 

 these. But unless the special needs of any given soil are 

 well understood, well made barn-yard manure is much more 

 reliable than any special fertilizer. An analysis will help us 

 nothing, as the different parts of the same field show a dif- 

 ferent analysis, and the analysis does not show whether the 

 ingredients are in condition to be assimilated by the grow- 

 ing plant. 



Chemical manures, lime, salt, plaster, etc., are no fertil- 

 izers in themselves, but their mission is to make those al- 

 ready in the soil available. In the course of time, they will 

 impoverish the land and will then cease to have any effect, 

 until other manure has again been added, when they may 

 again be used with effect. In general it is better to add 

 fertility direct than to draw it out of the soil with chemical 

 m£,nures, lime, etc. 



What is true of one manure in any particular soil or 

 season may not be true of another, or the same under different 

 circumstances and different experiments often lead to different 

 results, something not strange when we reflect upon the great 

 variety of conditions involved. The Illinois dairyman should 

 not go off the farm for manure; his chief dependence should 

 be clover and stable-yard manure, plowing under green crops, 

 ji-atching out in spots with such other manures as can be 

 obtained cheap enough to warrant their use. Clover should 

 ever constitute his greatest source to draw upon for fertility, 

 as it is out of the question to produce enough good stable 

 manure to keep up the fertility of his land. Clover is good 



