432 
is an appreciation of the fact that the intelligent 
use of cover crops and the practicing of a complete 
cultivation will hold and make available all the 
water needed for his crops in normal seasons. 
WATER IN ANIMALS.—The necessity of an 
abundant water supply for farm animals is often 
overlooked. Water has many definite functions to 
perform in the animal’s body. First, it builds up 
(lie animal tissues, which gives them a plump, full 
appearance. Second, it aids digestion by dissolving 
particles of food material, and by reducing them 
to smaller particles the digestive fluid can act 
upon them more quickly. Third, water gi'eatly 
hastens the assimilation of food material through 
its ability to stimulate diffusion. Fourth, it is a 
strong factor in regulating the body temperature. 
The need of keeping a constant supply of fresh, clean 
pure water before stock at all times cannot be too 
strongly emphasized. The bird's body contains about 
55% water, the eggs which the bird produces con¬ 
tains about 65% of water, and if a good egg pro¬ 
duction is to be maintained considerable water must 
be supplied. The cow's body contains from 50 to 
00 per cent, of water, and the milk which she pro¬ 
duces contains 87 per cent, hence the necessity of 
an abundant supply of water on the dairy farm. 
Experiments show that the average dairy cow con¬ 
sumes in a day from 50 to 00 pounds of water. 
Animals—Tissue contains from 50 to 00 per 
cent, of water. 
Plants—Tissue contains from 70 to 00 per 
cent ol water. 
Must we not look tc the water supply? 
SUCCULENT FOOD.—The supply of water can be 
maintained in two ways. First, by keeping a fresh 
supply of drinking water on hand at all times. It 
has also been proven that to get the maximum pro¬ 
duction a greater amount must be supplied than that 
consumed from the drinking trough. We all know 
how milk production is increased when the cows get 
out on June pasture. The dairyman will tell you 
that when corn is cut green and put in the silo, 
much more milk results from its feeding than if it 
had been allowed to become dry and fed as fodder. 
Silage litis a high water content, the cows relish it, 
and through its palatability it increases their appe¬ 
tite. The same is true with poultry. To get the 
best Winter egg yield, some form of succulent mate¬ 
rial must be supplied. Cabbage in the late Fall, 
and mangel beets in the Winter, make good succu¬ 
lent feeds. In the absence of these it is necessary 
to sprout some grain, usually oats. They are best 
fed when they are about two or three inches long, 
tender and brittle. Experiments have shown that 
egg production can be increased from eight to 12 
per cent, by the supplying of considerable amounts 
of mangel beets and sprouted oats to birds which 
had previously received no form of succulent mate¬ 
rial. Water it is that keeps our animals in good 
condition and in good appetite. Water it is, that is 
required by all plants if they are to grow properly, 
it is water, above all else, that the farmer needs 
to maintain the proper standard in all phases of 
agriculture. Appreciating this fact the supply 
should be assured through the taking of proper pre¬ 
cautions in advance. n. r. lewis. 
TALKS ABOUT SOILS AND FERTILIZERS. 
What Form of Lime ? 
I X trying to decide what kind of lime to buy, try 
to figure out the actual cost of a pound of lime 
in each material laid down at your station, 
(jround limestone sells for less per ton than burned 
lime. It contains less lime, but the freight on a ton 
of it is as much as that on stone lime, just from the 
kiln. (let. the price per ton of lime, add the cost 
of freight to your station, then obtain an analysis 
from the dealers; lind how much lime there is in a 
ton, and in that way learn what a pound of it will 
cost you. You will generally find when the limekiln 
is far away, that a pound of actual lime in burnt 
lime costs the least money. In figuring this matter 
it is safe to assume that two pounds of the ground 
limestone will be needed to give the effect of one 
pound of burnt lime. The value of hydrated lime 
lies in its fineness and ease of distribution, also in 
die fact that it is all carefully slaked and in better 
shape than either of the other forms. Usually the 
cheapest way to buy lime is to get the stone lime 
right from the kiln and slake it yourself, but this 
is hard and disagreeable work, and most farmers in 
these days prefer to have such work done for them. 
As for the effect of different kinds of lime, the 
limestone is better on ordinary farm crops where 
the land is in fair condition, and a great need is 
to increase the amount of oiganic matter. Ground 
THE RURAL N EW-VOW KHK 
limestone will not burn or eat up this organic mat¬ 
ter as rapidly as the burnt lime will. On hard clay 
soils where the land is very sour, a quicker action 
is required. On this kind of soil, we have obtained 
best results from the burnt lime, and in our own 
practice, plowing under cover crops each year, we 
consider it best to use 500 or 000 pounds of burnt 
lime each year, rather than a ton or more at one ap¬ 
plication every three or four years. 
“ Black Alkali” in Western Soil. 
O N page 214 I notice the question of an in¬ 
quirer in regard to the effect of sage brush 
ashes on soils in the semi-arid regions. Your 
surmise that they may be injurious is correct. In 
clearing new land in the semi-arid country we al¬ 
ways take particular care not to burn our sage 
brush in large quantities so that the ashes accumu¬ 
late. The reason for t lis is that the ashes con¬ 
tain potassium carbonate, which forms black alkali 
in the soil. Black alkali is one of the worst soil 
troubles that we have to deal with in this part of 
the country, since it is very caustic, and if in suffi¬ 
cient strength in the soil will kill any crops that are 
planted where it exists. Most of the soils in the 
arid and semi-arid regions have an abundance of 
potash anyway, so wood ashes do not have the same 
high fertilizing value as they do in parts of the 
East where potash is not so plentiful. I would 
suggest to your correspondent, that he scatter the 
wood ashes so that they do not become too con¬ 
centrated at any one point. Stanley f. morse. 
Arizona Exp. Station. 
What to Do With Bones. 
I NOTICE after looking around in the pastures, there 
are unite a few bones of horses and cattle that have 
died, I am told, within the past five years. There 
seems to be at least a ton or more Mhat^anbe 
done with these to make them available? Could they 
he ground or burned or soaked between layers of wood 
ashes^ I know there are a couple of tons on neigh¬ 
bors’ places that I could have for the asking. Would 
it nav to buy a grinder to crush them. We have a 
gasoline engine. What would be the best and cheap¬ 
est method? J - M - M * 
Connecticut. 
These bones will contain about three per cent, of 
nitrogen and 25 per cent, of phosphoric acid. If they 
were ground or crushed fine, they would be worth 
about $30 a ton as fertilizer. Crushing these bones 
and fitting them for plant food is one of the hardest 
problems in the fertilizer trade. Even the manu¬ 
facturers with their powerful, machinery and every 
modern appliance have difficulty in fitting the hard¬ 
est hones, such as the shanks, skulls and shoulders. 
The easiest way to reduce the bones is to burn them. 
This is done by mixing the bones with dry wood or 
brush and burning as you would a bonfire. r lhe 
bones burn quite readily. Darwin, in his ‘Voyage 
of the Beagle,” tells of seeing the natives on the 
Falkland Islands kill a steer, strip off the meat and 
then proceed to cook the meat over a fiie made by 
burning the bones, and this also on a day when the 
rain fell steadily. It must be remembered, however, 
that what these natives would call “roast beef’ 
would be a very raw beef to a modern American. 
Burning, however, is a most wasteful way of hand¬ 
ling the bones; it drives off all the ammonia, which 
is the most valuable part of the bone. It leaves the 
phosphoric acid and lime in the form of bone ash, 
which is easily distributed over the ground, but the 
phosphoric acid is not as available as that in the 
crushed bone. It. would hardly pay to buy a bone 
mill or a steaming outfit unless one could handle 12 
or 15 tons of the bone. With a large supply, it 
would pay to build a tank or vat of plank with a 
steam coil for heating the boue. The bones are 
smashed as far as possible with a sledge or ax, put 
into this tank, and steamed under high pressure. 
This makes it easier to crush them, which is done 
in a bone mill run by either gasoline or steam power. 
This plan is followed by a good many farmers in 
New England, and some years ago was quite a com¬ 
mon practice in every country neighborhood where 
hones were collected and sold to the local dealer'. 
In your case with only a few tons of bones, it 
would hardly pay to buy this outfit. The fertilizer 
manufacturers use sulphuric acid for reducing the 
hones, after they have been broken up with the 
sledge. We do not advise the use of this acid on 
the farm. It is too dangerous to be handled except 
hy an expert. A drop of it in the eye might destroy 
the sight, and frightful accidents have occurred 
where careless workmen or children got at the 
acid. You can break the bones as well as you can 
with a hammer, and then pack them in unleaclied 
wood ashes. Take a box or barrel and put in a 
layer of about six inches of the ashes, then six 
inches of the broken bones, then more ashes, more 
Marcii 20, 
bones and so on. in alternate layers. Keep the 
entire mass wet. if possible, with the liquid from 
the stable. At the end of about three months niost 
of the bones will be softened so that they may be 
smashed up fairly fine with the heavy spade or 
sledge hammer. They can then be spread reason¬ 
ably well, and make a fair fertilizer. Some of the 
harder bones will require more time, and will never 
be thoroughly softened by this process. If you have 
an apple orchard, it is a good plan to break the 
softer bones as finely as you can and bury them in 
the ground around the trees. You will be surprised 
how quickly the tree roots will get after these 
broken bones and make use of them for plant food. 
In almost every neighborhood it would be possible 
for an enterprising mar. to collect large quantities 
of bones. As a boy in New England, the writer re¬ 
members scouring the neighborhood every Spring 
for everything he could find, from a chicken bone 
where the hawk had dropped his dinner, to the 
bones of the old horse that died in the swamp. 
These were sold to a local dealer who shipped them 
to Boston at a good profit. Later the owner of a 
water power fitted up a trip-hammer for smashing 
the bones, and a bone mill for grinding them. He 
bought the local supply and sold it back to the 
farmers as fertilizer at something like 500 per cent, 
profit. 
Use Manure on Corn. 
W HICH will give me the better results, to use ma¬ 
nure on land for corn and use a 4-6-3 for po¬ 
tatoes, or vice versa? I have not enough ma¬ 
nure for both crops and cannot afford the 4 0-3 
for both. J- M - ,! 
In a majority of cases it is better to use the stable 
manure on the corn crop, and the fertilizer on po¬ 
tatoes. In most cases where these crops enter the 
rotation this round is followed. The corn is far bet¬ 
ter adapted to making use of the manure. It is a 
rank heavy growing crop, making its best growth 
in the latter part of the Summer, when naturally 
the manure would be most available. The potatoes 
can take care of the fertilizer to better advantage, 
and in most rotations it pays to put a large share 
of the chemicals on the potato crop, seeding with 
grain or some cover crop after the potatoes are 
taken off. In this way there is practice'-y no loss 
of plant food. In case there is not enough manure 
for all farm crops our plan would be to put the 
greater part of it on corn. That appears to be the 
wisest plan in such case. 
Phosphoric Acid on Clay Soils. 
M ANY of our farmers on account of not being able 
to get much potash are only going to use 16 r V 
phosphoric acid for potatoes. Is it not poor 
judgment? In your opinion, is a complete fer¬ 
tilizer a paying investment in the long run to use on 
oats, seeding to grass at same time? n. E. 
Generally speaking it is not good judgment after 
using a complete fertilizer successfully for a number 
of years to depend entirely upon phosphoric acid. 
There are places where such use would pay. This 
would be chiefly on heavy clay soils where some 
cover crop like clover can be plowed under. Such 
soils are naturally strong in potash, and would be 
most likely to give up a fair mount of that element 
for one or two seasons. The clover or cover crop 
would supply more or less nitrogen. Such soils are 
usually lacking in phosphoric acid, aud thus the use 
of acid phosphate might be in such cases a wise plan 
of proceeding. It would not be safe to follow such 
a plan for a term of years unless we knew the soil 
was very strong in potash. Such a.plan might an¬ 
swer fairly well for a crop like corn, and yet fail 
with potatoes or oats. The reason for this will be 
evident when we consider the growing habits of 
these crops. Corn does not make its best growth un¬ 
til the late Summer, when the ground is naturally 
warm, and except in case of a drought, is moist. 
At that time the organic nitrogen in the soil is rap¬ 
idly made available and the corn may make use of 
it. There is not so great a necessity of using avail¬ 
able nitrogen in the early Spring. With the oats 
and potatoes, however, there must be a quick, 
steady growth from the first, and in order to obtain 
this, available nitrogen must be supplied. A cover 
crop and other organic forms of nitrogen would not 
be likely to supply this, and thus a quantity of ni¬ 
trate of soda might as well be added with the acid 
phosphate, whereas in the case of the corn, this 
nitrate would not be needed. Generally speaking, 
unless we are positive that our soil is well supplied 
with one or two particular elements of plant food, it 
pays best to use a complete fertilizer, and by that 
we mean one containing nitrogen, phosphoric acid 
and potash, and more than this, a complete fertilizer 
should carry at least two different forms of nitro¬ 
gen. 
