222 
WlSaOJ^SIJV STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
evenly as possible over the yard, having it as nearly level as I can. 
Upon the drainage side I make a dam to prevent the running away, 
unless there is a very great excess of wet, when it should be drawn 
off before it becomes so completely saturated with the soluble mat¬ 
ter of the manure pile. A certain amount of moisture must be re¬ 
tained or held in solution to cause it to heat and decompose. Here 
is one of the mistakes by the majority of farmers — they do not 
make the straw wet enough to cause it to rot. When, instead of 
the piling process as pursued by many farmers, I take a team in the 
month of June, when it is quite wet, and drive them over the man¬ 
ure, and they will poach it up. A better plan is, to feed the hogs 
on the pile with corn, and they will root and tumble it over, letting 
the air in, as the air must get to the straw before it will rot. 
Brother farmers, the course usually pursued is waste. We have 
tried to tell you how to utilize this waste. There is not a farmer 
in the state that raises forty acres of grain but could keep one hun¬ 
dred sheep, or their equivalent in other stock, from the straw alone; 
and if clover is used in connection, to make the stock fat, this will 
be much cheaper, properly used, and thus make a profit from the 
feed. But the great thing, and one of absolute necessity to every 
farmer, if he calculates to continue on his farm, is to make this 
waste, as now used, into manure, and it cannot be done without the 
stock. A quantity of clover on every farm is most desirable. 
Let this idea be impressed. 
Another source of great waste is, animal vitality. Let me bring 
an illustration to bear, and it is not an isolated case, but one of 
common practice. The farmer brings his stock to the yard in the 
fall usually in good condition, and by the freezing and starving pro¬ 
cess, or allowing the cattle to run to the stack and compel them to 
pull their living out of the side of the stack, when it is packed so 
close that it is impossible for them to get more than a few straws at 
a time, and that, too, pulled from a place where they have tried, 
perhaps, a hundred times before to do the same, breathing on it 
until it becomes foul with their breath, and the breath of other stock, 
and until it is sickening to them. Let me bring this home to you. 
How would you like to eat from the same plate for a hundred times 
without washing, where you or your comrades have eaten? Do you 
not think it would become disgusting, sickening? So, too, with the 
cattle or any other stock. “ But they are animals,” says one. Yes, 
but they have taste as well as you. 
