4887 
479 
THE RURAL HEW-Y9RKER. 
ing through tho mnnure; that the mangers he 
so arranged as to require a minimum amount 
of labor in foddering; that there be some 
roomy hox-stalls for wintering calves, and for 
turniug cows before farrowing; and that 
there be a convenient, storage-room for bed¬ 
ding and ground feed, as well as ample room 
for hay and fodder. That these conditions 
can be best furnished in a basement barn I 
think admits of no question, and so the plan 
which I submit is for a barn of this kind. 
While sloping land will save labor in making 
the "fill” to get into f.ho main floor with the 
wagon, it is not absolutely necessary, and 
some of the bast basement barns I am ac¬ 
quainted with are built on level ground. 
Neither is it necessary that the basement 
should lie entirely of stone or brick; the side 
where the fill is to be made may be of stone, 
or the entire basement may be boarded if the 
barn is on level laud, and a stone abutment 
built several feet from the barn to hold the 
fill, and a bridge be made across the space 
between it and the barn doors. There is one 
point in which 1 made a mistake in the first 
basement barn I built, and on which 1 think a 
word of caution necessary. Do not excavate 
so as to make thorough drainage difficult,, I 
dug eighteen inches too deep, and in conse¬ 
quence was obliged to put raised floors in all 
the basement while a part of it would have 
been better with an earth floor if I had not 
made this mistake. 
The plan, Figs. 252 and 253, is for a barn 
70x40 feet, which is calculated to stable 30 
cows in stalls, anti which also gives a space 
30 feet long by 12 wide, which can be divided 
at pleasure into box-stulls by movable parti¬ 
tions and used for cows at calving-time, or for 
calves or yearlings to run loose in. If it is 
desired to keep horses also in this stable, then 
one row of stalls must be set apart for them, 
and cither three feet be taken from the cellar 
and store-room at the right of Fig. 252, or 
that much be added to the length of the build¬ 
ing to give a width of 12 feet in the stable 
from manger back. This may seem narrow, 
but my stable is just this length clear of the 
manger, and I find it ample. In the drawing 
I have shown the barn arranged for cattle 
only. Fig. 252 shows a plan of the basement 
and will be readily understood by reference to 
the letters aud figures. W, W, W, W, show 
the walks on which to pass in to milk and car¬ 
ry out the milk; each is two feet wide aud ex¬ 
actly on a level with the floors on which the 
cows stand; d, <1, </, if, are the manure ditches. 
Each is two feet wide and eight inches deep, 
and they are easily stepped across in passing 
in and out to mill:; /, /, /, /, are the floors on 
which the cows stand, and are five feet long 
from manger to drop. This is the right length 
for cows ot average size, say of 1,0u0 pounds 
weight, and cows of 1,200 will lie comfortably 
on them; but for small Jersey cows they are 
eight or 10 inches too long, and if such cows 
are to be kept,one or more rows of stalls should 
be made with shorter floors, or enough to ac¬ 
comodate them. M, M, are mangel's four feet 
wide, from each of which two rows of cows 
will eat their hay or fodder. The floors to 
them should be raised from eight inches to a 
foot higher than that on which tho cows stand. 
1 hey should be floored with dressed lumber, 
running lengthwise of the mangers and should 
be boarded inside so that there will be no cor¬ 
nel's to catch dust and dirt, and so that they 
can be swept from end to end with no impedi¬ 
ments in the way. The fewl boxes for the 
cows should lie spiked or bolted to the stud¬ 
ding, which helps to make the partitions be¬ 
tween the stalls, aud should be a foot or more 
above the floor of the manger, so that it will 
be easy to sweep under them. They will also 
rest ou a two-inch plank which is spiked to 
the studding between the cows and the man¬ 
ger to prevent the animals from pulling the 
hay under their foot. The hay or fodder is 
dropped directly into these mangel's from 
the two drive-ways or barn floors which will 
he shown iu the plan of the upper floor. If 
one stable is used tor horses, make tho manger 
five feet wide, instead of four, so that the 
horses and cows cannot reach each other 
across it I have one stable arranged in this 
way and tin* horses and cows never interfere 
with each other, On the side of the manger 
where the horses stand, board up throe feet 
high and place the feed boxes in the stall, not 
allowing them to project over the manger at 
all, hut it will not do to put the cow boxes 
back so far, or when eating they would stand 
with their hind feet iu tho manure ditch, mak¬ 
ing it, very inconvenient to ruilk them. My 
boxes project seven inches over tho cow stable 
floor, aud i have one cow that weighs about 
1,40U pounds, but she stands up on the floor 
and cats out of the feed box while being 
milked. 
1’) l 3 ] F, is a passage four feet wide, leading 
from the store-room the entire length of the 
basement, and this will enable one to use a 
wheelbarrow or hand-cart to take meal for 
feed, or oaalf or sawdust for beddiug. The 
part of the basement marked “Store-room,” 
can be divided as best suits. There should be 
a room for ground feed, and if roots are 
grown half of it can bo used for a root cellar. 
By setting up studding 10 inches wide, and 
boarding both sides, filling a foot at the bot¬ 
tom with broken stones and grouting, and 
then packing dry sawdust to the top of the 
partitions, it will be frost-proof. My cellar is 
made in this way, and with temperature 18 
degrees below zero last winter, wc kept everj' 
thing in good condition, There should also 
be a room large enough to store several loads 
of sawdust or chaff for bedding, as fine bed¬ 
ding is much better than straw on the short 
floors and in the manure ditches. I have used 
sawdust for several years, but the past winter 
I used clmlT from the corn-shellcr, aud found 
it excellent. There should be chutes from the 
left hand of the drive-way above, so that 
meal, chaff, or anything to be put into this 
store-room can be unloaded directly from the 
wagon, and not carried down stairs. The 
stairs to the upper floor can be located any¬ 
where in the store-room that suits best, but I 
think I should prefer them where marked. 
There should be a door at the end of each 
manure ditch, for the cows to pass in and out, 
and so that the manure can he wheeled out, 
and double doors at the end of the center- 
stable, so that a wagon can be backed in to 
load the manure on it. Tho basement story 
should be eight feet high, aud there should be 
windows enough to furnish light. The center 
stable may be used as the farmer thinks best. 
It can be divided into five-box stalls if needed, 
or nil of it may be thrown into ouo or two 
stables by removing the partitions. 1 would 
use the earth for a floor, and keep young 
cattle loose in it, to tramp the waste from the 
mangers into the manure, and in stormy 
weather the manure from the cattle ditches 
might be thrown into it. By boarding the 
sides tight, next to tho walks, three feet of 
manur© may be allowed to accumulate in it, 
and if it is well supplied with straw and corn 
fodder waste, there will be no exhalations 
from it. My stable of this kind had over 
three feet of solid manure in it last winter, 
and no one would suspect it ns there was no 
smell, ami we always kept enough of straw 
and corn-stalks on the surface to keep it dry. 
The row of figures through the middle of 
the plan of basement shows the width of each 
department. 
Fig. 253 gives the plan of the upper floor. 
It is arranged with two drive-ways or barn 
floors, each so arranged that a hay chute, 
under the edge of the mow at the right hand 
as you drive iu, will come exactly over the 
mangers in the basement. These hay chutes 
are made by leaving an open space three feet 
wide between the barn floor and the bay. To 
economize room and make this opening safe, 
it is covered with a sloping floor of boards, 
the upper ends of which rest against a mail-tie 
3>tj feet above the born floor and tbe 
lower end rests on the bay floor. This 
leaves a continuous opening along the 
side of tbe floor so that hay or fodder can be 
dropped directly in front of tbe cattle, and at 
tbe same time the opening is so protected that 
neither man nor horse is in any danger of fall¬ 
ing through it. I have known many acci¬ 
dents to happen where trap doors were used 
for getting hay to the basement, and I would 
not have one under any circumstances. Be¬ 
sides, hay dropped through a hole must lie 
carried and scattered after being thrown 
down; but by this arrangement it will need to 
be handled but once, and the labor of fodder¬ 
ing can lie reduced to a minimum. Another 
chute can tie made for hay on the opposite 
side of the large hay to feed the cattle in the 
center stable. 
As our drive-ways or barn floors are but 12 
feet wide in order to tiring the hay chutes 
directly over the mangers below, and it is 
sometimes difficult to lead a horse past a load 
of hay in so narrow a space, a passage four 
feet wide leads from one barn floor to the 
other, through which the horses can be led— 
single file—to take them out. It is also 
designed that space No. 5, shall not be a bay, 
but shall have a floor seven feet above the 
main floor, leaving this space, 13x40 feet,to be 
Used for granaries, storage of implements, 
stairway and any purposes to which the owner 
sees fit to put it, and this would give a chance 
to lead the horses out. if a load of hay was 
driven Into- each space. I would recommend 
that this loft be floored with three inch strips 
laid two inches apart, as such an open floor is 
valuable for curing out beans, broom-corn or 
a load of hay or fodder which has been caught 
in a rain, or any crop which is brought iu 
only partly cured. Tho horse-fork can be 
used in this baru to deliver hay at any part 
of it. It can easily be arranged to use a part 
of the space over the baru floor if desired. I 
do not offer this us a perfect plan, but as one 
which certainly make it easy to car©for stock, 
and economizes mom. It would be an improve¬ 
ment on it if the center stable below could be 
so arranged as to have double doors at each 
end so that a team could be driven through, 
and this would be a great convenience iu tak- 
iug out the manure. I would recommend 
movable mangel's for this stable, such as are 
used by Western cattle feeders for shock corn 
These mangers are simply boxes ou legs, and 
for a stable of this size they should be made 
three feet wide, six feet long and one foot deep, 
aud they would not then be too heavy for two 
men to carry. The advantages in using these 
boxes for mangers are, that they can be moved 
from side to side, so as to have all the waste 
tramped alike, and can be taken out of the 
way when the team is to be driven through to 
remove the manure. 
There are many ways in which the arrange¬ 
ment of this !<am can be changed to suit the 
ideas of the owner. For example, three- 
fourths of the space designated as “store¬ 
room” in the basement may be used as a 
stable, leaving only a small store room where 
the stairs go up, and the meal and bedding 
can be stored on the upper floor and dropped 
through a chute into tbe small room below as 
needed. An incidental advantage of the hay 
chutes is that they give thorough ventilation 
to the basement, and if the barn has a ventila¬ 
tor or two at the roof, the air will always be 
pure in all parts of it. If one intends to build 
a bam he should study this plan carefully, 
decide on what modifications he may need, 
make out his bill of lumber, aud figure the 
exact cost of material before he goes to a car¬ 
penter, and then compare his own figures 
with those of the latter. Several hundred 
dollars are often saved in building a barn by 
mastering the details for oue’s self and thor¬ 
oughly understand ing what is wanted before 
the work is begun. This bam eau be built 
without a stick of timber larger than six inches 
square in it. 
TREATMENT OF LIQUID MANURE. 
As to the proposed plan of adding some 
phosphatic substance to liquid manure, with 
few exceptions materials calculated to act as 
good absorbents should be rich in organic 
matter. Floats, phospbatie guanos, aud, in 
fact, nearly all phosphatic materiul contain¬ 
ing any considerable quantity' of phosphoric 
acid, are composed largely of mineral matter; 
hence the amount, necessary to convert urine 
into a product convenient for handling would 
make a manure very rich in phosphoric acid 
and correspondingly weak in nitrogen and 
potash. The use of such materials therefore, 
instead of serving the double purpose of an 
absorbent and a furnisher of phosphoric acid, 
would largely defeat thp end in view. 
A very good plan for treating liquid manure 
and one profitably carried out by farmers in 
some sections, is to drain it into a shallow 
cistern so arranged as to be free from surface 
drainage, and absorb it with dried inuck, 
turf, leaves, or any available waste rich in 
organic matter. This material is added as 
often as is deemed necessary, aud along with 
it phosphoric acid in the shape of floats, or, 
preferably, phosphatic guanos containing car¬ 
bonate of lime. Peuguin Islands and Grand 
Cayman Islands guanos are comparatively 
cheap sources of the latter. They contain 
about 25 per cent, of phosphoric acid, aud the 
addition of one half pound would be sufficient 
for the product of urine from one cow per 
day. This method is simple and can be car¬ 
ried out by the average farmer at little 
expense, besides giving iu all respects an ex¬ 
cellent complete manure. 
Since the nitrogen aud potash of urine are 
very readily available for the plant, the best 
plan would seem to bo, where farmers have 
the facilities for collecting and evenly dis¬ 
tributing the liquid, to appiy it in that condi¬ 
tion, and to add the necessary amount of 
phosphoric acid in the soluble form as from 
bone black superphosphate. 
Rudger’s College. e. b. voorhees. 
MANURE NOTES. 
We had, this spring, eight barrels of hen 
manure from a flock of 40 hens. Such man¬ 
ure sells in our neigbborhod at about $1.25 per 
barrel, and is well worth its price. It contains 
the plaster which was sprinkled under the 
roosts twice each week during the winter. It 
was used ou corn. It was put in the hill 
and supplied about three-fourths of an acre. 
Ou the rest of the field a light dressing of cow 
manure was plowed in, and a handful of a 
high-grade fertilizer dropped at each bill, on 
the surface. The corn ou the part which re¬ 
ceived the hen mauure is perceptibly taller 
and greener than that on the other. 
Farmers often make a mistake in handling 
commercial fertilizers for the first time. The 
argument advanced is that if a little will help 
a crop somewhat, a great deal will help it 
greatly, and that the closer the fertilizer is 
put to the seed, the better the crop. Acting 
on this theory, the full amount of a powerful 
dresssting of fertilizer is placed in the hill or 
drill. A little soil is scraped over the fertilizer 
and the seed placet! ou this. We have been 
able to watch the result of this system on three 
Fig. 252. 
70 Sect 
