1874 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
95 
hen manure, bone-dust, horn shavings, refuse 
wool, hair, blood, or any other animal or inor¬ 
ganic matter. 
“Is it better to plow under the manure or 
apply it on the surface ? ” 
Whichever is most convenient. The real 
point is to make rich manure and get it thor¬ 
oughly decomposed without loss before putting 
it on the land. Then use it on some crop that 
will appropriate it at once. Of course, a good 
deal can be said in favor of manuring the soil 
rather than of manuring the crop. It depends 
on circumstances. The Deacon thinks long, 
strawy manure is worth more for lightening 
the soil and making it porous than for its 
plant-food. I am not sure but he is right, for 
it is certain that such manure as is made almost 
wholly from straw does not contain much 
plant-food. 
The next letter is about petroleum. But I 
have told all I know about it. It is good to 
preserve wood. It is not good for paint. The 
easiest way to apply it to the shingles on a 
roof is to stop up the gutters. Then take the 
petroleum on to the top of the roof in a water¬ 
ing-can and sprinkle the whole roof with it two 
or three times. The more you can get it to ab¬ 
sorb the better. If any of the petroleum runs 
into the gutter apply it with a brush to the 
shingles below the gutter. I use two or three 
barrels a year. The price varies. I have paid 
as high as $10 per barrel. I have just bought 
two barrels of 43 gallons each for $7 per bbl. 
This includes the barrels. They offer me $1 
each for the barrels. But I find them very con¬ 
venient on the farm. They do not shrink in 
the sun. Sawn in two they make capital 
watering troughs. 
“ R P. W.” writes from Nebraska that he is 
in the sheep business. He keeps 300 sheep, 
and has only lost six in ten months. He feeds 
prairie hay and corn in winter. Little timothy 
is raised. The prairie grass gives out on the 
first frost, and he wants something for late fall 
and early spring feed. He asks about rape and 
mustard. The latter will not stand frost. The 
former will. As long as prairie hay and corn 
are so abundant, I should doubt if it would 
pay to raise either mustard or rape. I should 
try Kentucky blue grass and timothy. Keep 
the stock ®ff of it after July, and use it as a late 
fall and winter run for the sheep, feeding prairie 
hay and corn as well. He asks if long-wooled 
sheep will do well in flocks of five hundred. 
The size of the flock has little to do with the 
matter. It is a question of care and food. With 
dry winter quarters and an unfailing supply of 
food and water, with a good run on dry land 
in winter, I see no reason why long-wooled 
sheep can not be kept in as large flocks as 
Merinos. I have Cotswold sheep, grade Cots- 
wolds, and Merinos running in the same flock, 
and the Cotswolds and their grades keep fatter, 
grow faster, and yield more wool than the 
Merinos. But they are larger sheep, and of 
course eat much more food. They have no 
better food, however, than the Merinos. All 
run together and are fed alike. I have only 
half a dozen Merino ewes, which I keep to 
raise lambs for my own eating. They look 
very forlorn by the side of a two hundred and 
fifty pound Cotswold. Visitors often say that 
the Cotswolds starve the Merinos. It has 
usually been thought that Merinos, being more 
active, would starve the Cotswolds. If I lived 
in Nebraska I am not sure that I should keep 
long-wooled sheep. The Merinos can rough 
it better, and where there is no demand for 
lambs or mutton I certainly should not keep 
any of the English breeds of mutton sheep. 
“ That is sound,” says the Deacon. “ We do 
not want the West to compete with us in rais¬ 
ing mutton and long wool. What is your next 
letter ? ” 
It is from “ R It. H.,” of Rockton, Ontario. 
He has a field of clover, mown for hay and seed 
last year. It will be sown to wheat next fall. 
He has drawn his winter manure into the field 
as fast as it was made and put it in a pile. It 
is fermenting enough, he says, to keep the snow 
melted on top. The field will be pastured until 
June. Then turn out the cattle, and allow the 
clover to grow to August. Then plow under 
the clover, harrow, and cultivate until the 
beginning of September, and then drill in the 
wheat. “ Now,” he writes, “ will it be better 
to apply the manure on the clover in the spring 
or rot it thoroughly through the summer and 
spread it on the land just before drilling in the 
wheat ? The soil is a sandy loam.”—That is a 
well put question. It will be better for the 
land in the end to apply the manure to the 
clover in the spring; but he will probably get 
more wheat if he can keep the manure over in 
good condition until fall, and then spread it 
on the furrows and harrow it in before 
drilling. I adopted this plan on part of my 
wheat last year. But I kept the manure in the 
basin in the yard, where I could pump the 
drainage water on it when necessary. 
“ If I had such a field,” says the Deacon, “ I 
would plow under the manure in May or June, 
drill in with beans, and sow wheat in the fall. 
You did so once, and had a good crop of beans 
and a big crop of wheat after them.” 
It is a capital plan when your land is rich. 
- —K • «- 
Making Rich Manure. 
Last month we gave some illustrations of a 
method of feeding stock in covered sheds. We 
now desire to show the value of the manure so 
made. The greatest need of our farming just 
now is, and in the future will be, the produc¬ 
tion of rich manure, and until every farm shall 
have a few feeding animals kept expressly with 
a view to the manufacture of manure, our ag¬ 
riculture will fail of securing its greatest prof¬ 
its. The present system of making and keep¬ 
ing manure is a most wasteful one. It is safe to 
say that at least fifty per cent of the value of 
manure is lost by its exposure to the weather 
during a whole winter, at least under ordinary 
circumstances. 
Although we have never made exact experi¬ 
ments, yet having during one winter kept sev¬ 
eral head of stock in a covered shed, constantly 
well bedded with straw, and allowed the manure 
to accumulate until spring beneath the cattle, 
we can testify to the merits of this system of 
feeding under cover. The stock were kept in 
the best of health. They exhibited the great¬ 
est contentment. They were cared for and 
kept clean by carding with the least trouble of 
any of our stock. The manure when removed 
in the spring was in the finest condition and 
showed its value by bringing a crop of pota¬ 
toes, for which it was used, equal to 450 bush¬ 
els of Early Rose and 600 of Harrison potatoes 
per acre respectively. When, therefore, we 
call attention to the following experiments by 
a prominent English farmer, it is with perfect 
confidence, as we have realized somewhat of 
the same results in our own experience. The 
experiments to which we refer were made by 
Lord Kinnaird, a large Scotch land-owner and 
farmer who has followed the practice for over 
20 years of feeding his cattle in covered courts 
or sheds in which the manure accumulates be¬ 
neath the cattle during the whole winter or 
feeding season. Recently Lord Kinnaird 
planted potatoes upon four acres of land. Two 
acres were manured from the covered stalls or 
sheds, and two with barnyard manure of the 
ordinary kind. The character of the soil was 
exactly similar upon each of the plots, and 
they adjoined each other. The crops were as 
follows: Upon one acre with covered manure 
the yield was 472 bushels, and upon the other 
acre 443 bushels. With ordinary manure from 
the open barnyard the yield was 272 and 297 
bushels upon each acre respectively. The fol¬ 
lowing year these plots were sown with wheat, 
and the crops were, upon the first mentioned 
acres 55 bushels 5 pounds and 53 bushels 47 
pounds; upon the last mentioned, 41 bushels 
19 pounds and 42 bushels 38 pounds respec¬ 
tively. The difference in yield shows the extra 
value of the covered manure. In our own case 
14 head of young stock (two-year old heifers) 
were fed in a lean-to shed (40 x 12), the lumber 
for which cost less than $30, and the labor in 
putting it up less than $5. They were fed 
upon cut corn-stalks, bran, and corn-meal from 
October to April, and were bedded with wheat 
straw quite plentifully. All through a cold 
winter the manure never became frozen, and it 
made a mass of the most compact kind three 
feet deep, so that there were 1,440 cubic feet or 
over 11 cords, which if it had been as loose as 
ordinary barnyard manure would have meas¬ 
ured nearly twice as much. The slow fermen¬ 
tation it had undergone had completely rotted 
the straw and reduced it to the finest condition, 
so that it was removed with the greatest ease. 
Tire absence of any evaporation or exposure to 
the weather doubtless fully doubled the value 
of the manure, to say nothing of the saving of 
labor in the making and final handling of it. 
The Use op Salt for Stock. —While a 
certain amount of salt is absolutely necessary 
for the health of stock, it by no means follows 
that its indiscriminate use is either needful or 
safe. On the contrary, salt used in excessive 
quantities is highly dangerous. It then acts 
upon the stomach and intestines as an irritant 
poison, and cases of death have occurred 
through permitting cattle and hogs to consume 
too much of it. When stock are allowed free 
access to it they will take a small quantity very 
often, but if denied a frequent supply they be¬ 
come ravenous for it, and are in danger of eating 
it to excess. The safest way is to use a small 
quantity regularly in the food; a quarter of an 
ounce daily being amply sufficient for a cow or 
a horse, and a fourth of that quantity for a hog 
or a sheep. If stock are salted once a week no 
more than one ounce at a time should be given 
to a cow, and a quarter of an ounce to a sheep 
or hog. It should also be given in such a man¬ 
ner that no one animal should eat more than 
its share. It may be given scattered thinly in 
the feeding trough with more safety than in 
any other way excepting when it is mixed 
with the feed. Regularity in its use is the most 
conducive to the health of the cattle. We find 
it necessary to give this caution because some 
of our readers have been led to suppose, very 
erroneously, that as salt is a good thing, stock 
can not have too much of it. 
