THE FARMER

Bruce Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 2624, 26 October 1894, Page 4

THE FARMER

VALUE OF LIQUID MANUEE. A SCOTCH FARMER'S EXPERIENCE. ('Agricultural Gazette.') The urine from forty-four cowa and a bull is collected in a tank, without addition of more water than the washing of the pathways and gutters in the shed. From the tank it is pumped by one- of Eeid and Co.'s (Aberdeen) Simplex pumps — which coats about £2 10s and never chokes — into a water-cart. By this it is distributed every ten days or so in winter over an old pasture of thirty five acres, and in the summer over about five acres of arable land, which is under Italian ryegrass and clover in their firßt year. This, of course, is changed every year. The land is a light gravelly loam in parts very thin, and ia none deep or fertile. These forty acres maintain during the six months of summer the forty -five head on the farm, besides supplying a daily ration of cut grass to twelve more cows kept on an adjoining farm. It is, therefore, fair to say that forty acres feed fifty cows for aix months without other manuring thau the urine of forty of them. Without the urine, that extent of land could not j in this district feed more than half the number. But besides the pasture ihe cows get daily _ or 51b of cheap foreign barley and malt combs costing about 2d a head. '1 his is necessary, not because the grass ia insufficient, but because cows cannot eat enough of such bulky fodder to keep up tbe full flow of milk, and it must, therefore, be supplemented at night by some more concentrated food. During frost, or in strong sunshine in summer, the urine slightly burns the tips of the herbage. But the injury is inappreciable, aa it instantly pushes afresh from root, and cattle do not abject to urine-fed grass as they do to that on which solid droppings fall. If I had enough I should continue the application to the pasture land all summer. It has been greatly improved by it, and is full of white clover. But I find the application still more profitable to the annual red clover and ryegrass. This affords four cuts a year, commencing in May, and each cut followed by a fresh application of urine. These four cuts may be moderately reckoned at an average of 5 tona per acre for each, giving a total of 20 tons per acre of the most succulent and nutritious food. We may estimate the pecuniary and mercantile value roughly by com parison in thia way. Iv the Lothians the growing of Italian ryegrass, alone or mixed with clover, has of late years become largely practised. If grown by itself the Italian ryegrass follows a heavily- manured potato crop; it receivee a spring top-dressing of about 3cwt of nitrate of soda ; it is top dressed after each with another cwt., and it yields three or four cuts a year. If near a town it is let to dairymen at an average rent of £20 per acre for the season. The cost for top-dressing only is, say, £3 per acre, which would be £15 on five acres. In my case similar results are produced by the summer urine during night only of forty-five cows, which is equivalent to the total urine during the year of eleven cows. Tbis, then, ia practically equal in value to £15 of nitrate of soda. Hence the nitrogen from each cow in liquid form is worth 28a a year. The potash, which I enables me to grow clover in addition to ryegrass, cannot be worth lees than 10s more. There is, therefore, a total value per head, as compared with artificials, of £1 18s. The cost of application is about £6 a year — 3ay 2. per bead. If the crop grown is worth commercially £20 gross when it consists only of ryegrass, and is removed from the farm, I think it will be admitted tbat it is worth something more when it is half clover and consumed on the farm, co tbat its profits are not shared with a middleman, and the dung from it ia returned to the land. Thia would be equally the case if it were employed in feeding, cattle as it is when making milk.