CONSERVING MANURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20474, 28 January 1930, Page 16

CONSERVING MANURE.

jjfr: USEFUL HINTS. During wet weather, and particularly In the winter months when the rainfall is heaviest, manure stored in the open is sure to have a great deal of its value washed away. Opportunities for storing manure under cover are usually nonexistent, though if everyone realised the fact that the stuff may lose half its /virtue in the space of three or four months' storage, greater effort might be made to provide a protective covering of some description. As things are, however, much may be done to save what is usually considered., the inevitable loss caused by rain. The liquid that drains from the heap can be caught and thrown back again, though it is even better to make use of it at once by distributing it on some piece of land near by that needs

A surface drain is easily made, and the liquid can bo led into a tank or receptacle of some description. Even a large tub sunk in the ground is better than nothing; From another point of view, the waste of liquid manure that one so often sees is very much to be regretted. Very frequently one finds the manure heap standing adjacent to a pond from which horses and cattle are in the habit of drinking. In time the pond becomes so foul that it is undrinkable. and many cases _of serious illness, among horses especially, have been traced to this cause. r ihe common habit of dumping heaps of ■manure by the roadside may also be the means of contaminating streams into which the liquid eventually finds its way. This may be a ready means of spreading disease, and it is quite possible that even foot-and-mouth disease has been conveyed from one farm to another in this way. For every reason, therefore, the liquid, which runs from manure heaps should be prevented from escaping.