SOIL FERTILITY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21554, 17 January 1940, Page 3

SOIL FERTILITY

MANURIAL VALUE OF SHEEP Sheep, in common with all forms of livestock, tend to maintain soil fertility, but to a greater extent, since the amount of plant food in sheep manure is greater than in other kinds. The sheep, by reason of its great ability to digest food, and the lesser claims on it for its nutrition, voids in its excrement more, both in quality and value, of the most costly of all plant food elements than any other animal. The following figures show the composition of excrements of sheep in 1000 parts:—

Sheep eat their food and digest it far more closely than any other animal does, and so get most of the nutriment out of it, so that the much larger waste, as it may be said of the food consumed, is recovered. We may well think it an even more valuable form than in the growth of the animal itself, for we may accept it as a selfevident truth of farm science and practice that the manure is really the most valuable product of the farm. This may seem contradictory, but it is quite otherwise. The fact is that the raw food is brought by the sheep into a more soluble condition, so that even the waste of it in manure is more available plant food than it would be if less well digested, and thus it is that the sheep’s manure is next only to that of poultry who grind the food in the gizzard.

Solid Liquid Nitrogen 5.5 19.5 Phosphoric acid 4.1 0.1 Potash 1.5 22.7