At other times, we use dry earth as an absorbent.
[ CHAPTER XXII.]
MANURE ON DAIRY-FARMS.
Farms devoted principally to dairying ought to be richer and more productive than farms largely devoted to the production of grain.
Nearly all the produce of the farm is used to feed the cows, and little is sold but milk, or cheese, or butter.
When butter alone is sold, there ought to be no loss of fertilizing matter—as pure butter or oil contains no nitrogen, phosphoric acid, or potash. It contains nothing but carbonaceous matter, which can be removed from the farm without detriment.
And even in the case of milk, or cheese, the advantage is all on the side of the dairyman, as compared with the grain-grower. A dollar’s worth of milk or cheese removes far less nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, than a dollar’s worth of wheat or other grain. Five hundred lbs. of cheese contains about 25 lbs. of nitrogen, and 20 lbs. of mineral matter. A cow that would make this amount of cheese would eat not less than six tons of hay, or its equivalent in grass or grain, in a year. And this amount of food, supposing it to be half clover and half ordinary meadow-hay, would contain 240 lbs. of nitrogen and 810 lbs. of mineral matter. In other words, a cow eats 240 lbs. of nitrogen, and 25 lbs. are removed in the cheese, or not quite 10½ per cent, and of mineral matter not quite 2½ per cent is removed. If it takes three acres to produce this amount of food, there will be 8⅓ lbs. of nitrogen removed by the cheese, per acre, while 30 bushels of wheat would remove in the grain 32 lbs. of nitrogen, and 10 to 15 lbs. in the straw. So that a crop of wheat removes from five to six times as much nitrogen per acre as a crop of cheese; and the removal of mineral matter in cheese is quite insignificant as compared with the amount removed in a crop of wheat or corn. If our grain-growing farmers can keep up the fertility of their land, as they undoubtedly can, the dairymen ought to be making theirs richer and more productive every year.
“All that is quite true,” said the Doctor, “and yet from what I have seen and heard, the farms in the dairy districts, do not, as a rule, show any rapid improvement. In fact, we hear it often alleged that the soil is becoming exhausted of phosphates, and that the quantity and quality of the grass is deteriorating.”