“We do not lose much manure,” said I, “by feeding in the yards. You let a dozen pigs sleep in a pen all night, and as soon as they hear you putting the food in the troughs outside, they come to the door of the pen, and there discharge the liquid and solid excrements on the mass of manure left there on purpose to receive and absorb them. I am well aware that as pigs are often managed, we lose at least half the value of their manure, but there is no necessity for this. A little care and thought will save nearly the whole of it.”
BUYING MANURE BY MEASURE OR WEIGHT.
The Deacon and I have just been weighing a bushel of different kinds of manure made on the farm. We made two weighings of each kind, one thrown in loose, and the other pressed down firm. The following is the result:
WEIGHT OF MANURE PER BUSHEL, AND PER LOAD OF 50 BUSHELS.
| No. | KIND AND CONDITION OF MANURES. | Weight per Bushel in lbs. | Weight per Load of 50 bushels. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Fresh horse-manure free from straw | 37½ | 1875 |
| 2. | Fresh horse-manure free from straw, pressed | 55 | 2750 |
| 3. | Fresh horse-manure, as used for bedding pigs | 28 | 1400 |
| 4. | Fresh horse-manure, as used for bedding pigs, pressed | 46 | 2300 |
| 5. | Horse-manure from pig cellar | 50 | 2500 |
| 6. | Horse-manure from pig cellar, pressed | 72 | 3600 |
| 7. | Pig-manure | 57 | 2850 |
| 8. | Pig-manure, pressed | 75 | 3750 |
| 9. | Pig-manure and dry earth | 98 | 4900 |
| 10. | Sheep-manure from open shed | 42 | 2100 |
| 11. | Sheep-manure from open shed, pressed | 65 | 3250 |
| 12. | Sheep-manure from closed shed | 28 | 1400 |
| 13. | Sheep-manure from closed shed, pressed | 38 | 1900 |
| 14. | Fresh cow-dung, free from straw | 87 | 4350 |
| 15. | Hen-manure | 34 | 1700 |
| 16. | Hen-manure, pressed | 48 | 2400 |
“In buying manure,” said the Deacon, “it makes quite a difference whether the load is trod down solid or thrown loosely into the box. A load of fresh horse-manure, when trod down, weighs half as much again as when thrown in loose.”
“A load of horse-manure,” said Charley, “after it has been used for bedding pigs, weighs 3,600 lbs., and only 2,300 lbs. when it is thrown into the pens, and I suppose a ton of the ‘double-worked’ manure is fully as valuable as a ton of the fresh horse-manure. If so, 15 ‘loads’ of the pig-pen manure is equal to 24 ‘loads’ of the stable-manure.”
“A ton of fresh horse-manure,” said the Doctor, “contains about 9 lbs. of nitrogen; a ton of fresh cow-dung about 6 lbs.; a ton of fresh sheep-dung, 11 lbs., and a ton of fresh pig-manure, 12 lbs. But if the Deacon and you weighed correctly, a ‘load’ or cord of cow-manure would contain more nitrogen than a load of pressed horse-manure. The figures are as follows:
| A load of 50 bushels of fresh horse-dung, pressed and free from straw contains | 12.37 lbs. nitrogen. |
| A load of fresh cow-dung | 13.05 lbs. nitrogen. |
| A load of fresh sheep-dung | 10.45 lbs. nitrogen. |
| A load of fresh pig-dung | 22.50 lbs. nitrogen. |
“These figures,” said I, “show how necessary it is to look at this subject in all its aspects. If I was buying manures by weight, I would much prefer a ton of sheep-manure, if it had been made under cover, to any other manure except hen-dung, especially if it contained all the urine from the sheep. But if buying manure by the load or cord, that from a covered pig-pen would be preferable to any other.”