IO 
Bulletin 99. 
past, to obtain at the corral a four-horse wagon load of well-rotted 
manure for a consideration of twenty-five cents. This time is past, 
it lasted altogether too long. 
WHY SAVE The BARNYARD MANURE? 
I intentionally chose alfalfa as an illustration to show that it 
cost a great deal to raise a crop, which I endeavored to make evi¬ 
dent by converting the elements of fertility into their respective 
money values, which for a four-ton crop of alfalfa, per acre, 
amounts to $30.28, assuming that only one-half of the nitrogen 
present in this amount of alfalfa hay was obtained from the soil. 
I realize that it is difficult for the average ranchman to appreciate 
this fact, for it represents money value which he has never had 
represented in his bank account, nor has he ever seen the materials 
in mass, nor can he miss them from the place whence they have 
been taken. They are, nevertheless, no longer there, but have been 
embodied in the hay and removed with it. There is less plant food 
by this much in the soil than there was before. 
It costs less, not in the labor of plowing and preparing the seed 
bed, or of irrigating and harvesting, but in soil fertility, to grow a 
ton of wheat, or oats, or rye straw, still it cannot be grown except 
at a cost, and after it has grown and produced its crop of grain, it 
still has a value which is of too much importance to be permitted to, 
in any degree, go to waste. Thousands of tons of this material are 
left in the fields where stock has access to eat what it may, but very 
large quantities of it are removed before the next plowing by the 
ready means of the match, whereby the nitrogen and the organic 
matter, both beneficial to our soils, are dissipated in the atmosphere, 
while the ash constituents would have been far more valuable if ap¬ 
plied jointly with the other constituents of the straw. The glow of 
the burning straw pile is, even in this year of 1905, not an unusual 
sight. This, too, has been a wanton waste of fertilizing values 
which the future will teach us to utilize in a rational way. 
Cattle feeding in the vicinity of Fort Collins has given place 
to lamb feeding, at least, to a large extent. The number of lambs 
which have been or are being fed in this immediate neighborhood 
during this season, the winter of 1904-1905, is about 250,000 head. 
In order to get a clear idea of the important bearing of the ques¬ 
tion of barnyard manure upon our agriculture, I will estimate the 
manurial value of the voidings of 250,000 sheep, using conventional 
but conservative data. 
First, we will assume the feeding period to be 100 days; second, 
we will take the daily consumption of alfalfa at three pounds; third, 
we will assume the manurial value of alfalfa hay to be $11.90 per 
ton; fourth, that the voidings of the sheep contain 95 per cent, of 
the manurial values of the hay; fifth, that no corn has been fed. 
