WATERING MANURE HEAPS.

Colonist, Volume XIX, Issue 2283, 13 September 1877, Page 4

WATERING MANURE HEAPS.

If manure can be lept where it is always filled with water, in which it is partly submerged, and which fills the rest of the heap by capillarity, it will neither heat too muoh nor lose anything by evaporation. It is usually not difficult to manage this is in barn cellars, or under cover, provided it be built up over a tank or lies in a tight • basin. la warm weather, however, evaporation goes on so rapidly from the spongy heap, that unl.ss water is pumped over it, or in some way be present in abundance, it will Heat—burn—" fire-fang," tremendouely. The treading down of the heap by cattle is alone not sufficient, unless the admixture of cow-dung be considerable. We have been busy getting out manure lately, and I have been impressed with the fact that it is not that which is least fermented whioh is really the best, but that in which there has been a regular but controlled fermentation. In one oasa the cornstalks maiza are still tough, the straw, swamp hay, &o, saturated with liquid and incorporated well with the solid manure, but in no fit shape for plaot food. On tae contrary, those portions of the heap where the strawy mass could absorb the liquid manure, and be sprinkled frequently by water thrown over the heap from that which leaked into the low partß of the cellar, all the vegetable fibre was easily cut or broken, and at the same .time there was no odor of escaping ammonia. The fermentation had obviously gone on almost all winter, though the surface was frequently frozen. — American Agriculturist.