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The Rural New Yorker 
The Business Farmer’s Paper 
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L 
VoL. I,XX\T. 
Xi:W YORK. MAY 12. 1017. 
No. 4129. 
Silage and Farm Fertility 
Does It Produce an Acid Manure ? 
What element in stable inannre i.s lost by eontimied 
feeding of silage and what coininercial fertilizer is 
needed to make good that lossV We notice tluit on 
some of onr best dairy farms, heavily nniiuired, and 
with the same care and cultivation, crops cannot be 
raised as they were 10 years or more ago, before tlie 
advent of the silo. u. c. 
31cIIenry Co., Ill. 
Not Due to the Silage 
I SHOULD be inclined to question the accuracy of 
the observation that the yield of crops is falling 
off on faruns where heavy silage feeding prevails. 
If the crops on such farms are falling off, then It 
cannot be due to the acid condition of the soil due 
to sllage-fed cows. The acids in silage are organic 
acids, and these are entirely broken up in the diges¬ 
tive processes, otherwise thej' would seriously inter- 
Ifnch of the nitrogen consumed by tliei^e crops 
will be obtained directly from the atmosphere, if an 
intelligent .system of crop rotation is practisefl, Init 
all of the phos](horns and calcium must come from 
the soil, and the more thorough the .system of farm¬ 
ing the more rapid will be the depletion of the 
soil in these elements. 
For a time the abundance of nitrogen and potas¬ 
sium carried back to the land in the manure, .sup¬ 
plemented by the nitrogen captured from the air 
by leguminous crop.s, and the mineral elements 
Avorked OA'er and 'made available by these crops, 
may enable all the crops to draw' upon the reserve 
suppls' of phosphorus and calcium stored by Nature 
ill the soil: but the time will eA'eiitually come on all 
soils—and much earlier on those naturally de¬ 
ficient in these elements—when Nature Avill put an 
embargo on this procedure, lest the heedless far- 
soil as .soon as to one derived from sandstones or 
granites, hut the calcium .supply may be maiiitaiiiod 
for a 'much longer period if limestones have con¬ 
tributed to the making of the land. 
The soil of the home farm of the Ohio Experi¬ 
ment Station is a thin, .silty clay, derived from 
shales and .sandstones, and one Avhich has beeii 
subjected to an exhaustive system of agriculture 
for nearly a century. On this farm the following 
11-year'average yields of corn have been harvested: 
I’.usliels 
Treatment ]>(‘r acre 
Yard manure .. eo.O 
Yard manure and limestone. <(0.7 
Yard manure, lime.stone, acid phosphate. t)S.7 
Fresh manure, limestone, acid phosphate. 71.1 
The manure has been used in all cases at the 
rate of eight tons per acre, the limestone at the 
rate of two tons of finely ground raw stone per 
Digging Roadside Soil and Sweet Clover Plants for Inoculating Alfalfa. Fig. 256 
foi'e Avith the digestive processes of the ci)w. The 
excrement from silage-fed animals A\'ould not con¬ 
tain enough additional acid to make the .soil fer¬ 
tilized Avith this manure acid in reaction. If the 
crop.s on farms Avhere silage is an important part 
of the food fed are declining in yields, it is prob¬ 
ably due to some other cause. f. is. Mi iiFoiiD. 
Missouri Experiment Station. 
The Fertility in Milk 
Milk is the normal food of the young animal; 
consequently, milk must contain the materials out 
of which the skeleton and other tissues are built, 
the chief of Avhich are nitrogen, phosphorus and 
calcium. To get these materials into her milk the 
COW' abstruots them from her food: conse<inently, 
the resultant manure can never carry l)ack to the 
land all of these elements that the crops have taken 
out of the soil, if the feed of the cow Is limited ro 
the produce of the farm on which she is fed. 
mer pull all the phosphorus and calcium out of the 
land and leave none for his children; and the crops 
Avill begin to diminish in yield, not because the 
manure is “souring” the laud—it is the exhaustion 
of organic matter from the .soil that produces in¬ 
jurious acidity. neA'er the filling of the soil Avith 
such matter; it is the old, thin, Avorn-ont soils that 
become acid, not those rich in vegetable matter—■ 
but because it has so stimulated the crops by its 
abundance of nitrogen and potassium that they 
have been able to pull out .so much phosphorus and 
calcium as to reduce the supply of these elements 
to so low a level that not enough is uoav being made 
aA'ailahle annually to meet the nitrogen and potas¬ 
sium given in the manure—for ]>hints as Avell as 
animals and men require a “balanced ration.” 
The remedy is simple: Add limestone if the land 
is acid, and reinforce the manure Avith phosphorus. 
The hunger for phosphorus may come to a limestone 
acre, and the acid pho.sphate at tne rate of 40 
pound.s per ton of manure, mixed witli the manure 
in .Tannary, the “fresh” manure being spread on 
the land at once, the “yard” manure being lefl in 
a flat pile in an open barnyard until April and then 
spread and both plow'ed under at the .same time. 
These increases in the corn croi) have been folloAved 
by further increases in the crops following the corn 
Avithout additional treatment, which have amount¬ 
ed to more tlian tlie direct increase in the corn. 
Ohio Experiment Station. ciias. e. tiiokne. 
Needs Phosphate of Lime 
1. I cannot understand how' the manure from 
silage in itself Avonld produce any adverse effect 
upon the yield of various crops. If animals are 
fed, for example, upon a combination of poor hay 
and silage Avith only little grain, the resulting ma¬ 
nure Avould not be particularly satisfactory in that 
it would probably be lacking in uitrogen, phosphoric 
