Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1893-04-14
NO.23
coweo.our PASTURES.
One Man Restored Them with Skim
y.iIk and Cottonseed Meai

One Man Restored Them With skim.
yilk and cottonssed Meai.
Where dairying has been followed
for long term Of years find apparent
everywhere the same conditions that
prevail on my farm. While the mead
ows have retained their fertility, and
in many cases became more productive,
the pasture fields are gradually but
surely being depleted of every element
Of plant food BY the continual carrying
away OF the milk daily extracted from
them. without any other return than
the droppings of the grazing COWS
The tame grasses, such as timothy and
the clovers. have already gone, or are
rapidly disappearing. Nature, ever
fertile in expedients to cover her nak-
edness, has supplied their places with
wild grass or weeds, destitute of nutri-
ment-tough. wiry and undigestible;
only starvation will impel cows to
feed upon them. How can we arrest
this tendency to barrenness, and how
restore these fields, large part OF
them rough and untillable, to their for
mer productiveness? Many alleged
remedies are suggested; many methods
have been tried. One says: Reduce
the stock till generous portion of the
annual growth is left to return TO the
earth; the reserve of vegetable mold
or humus is real property" etc. It is
said that "all things cone to him who
waits" but he who waits for cowed-
out pasture to return to productivenees
from its own resources viii wait in
Il - Oh,
ry as a panacea for wornout land. This
involves a costly change-abandon
: ment of long experience in one pur-
suit to become n novice in another.
That fertility follows sheep may be
true, but they must be preceded by
good management. thoughtful caro-
and with the wherewith to produce
fertility.
After a three-years' experience in
feeding ration of skim milk and cot
tonseed meal to cows while at pasture
and noting its beneficial effect on the
quality and quantity of butter pro-
duced, also closely observing its effect
on the fields where it had been carried
and distributed by the cows while
feeding upon them, am of the opinion
that depleted, milked-out pastures may
be restored and carried to a higher de-
gree of productiveness than any ever
before possessed without an extra out
lay of labor or expense, but with n
large annual increase of profit Let
the hog be banished from the farm or
no longer be retained as an adjunct 30
the dairy. The exhalations arising
from his habitation can well be dis
pensed with. The milk he consumes
to make pound Of pork will, if fed to
cows, make pound of butter, worth
three or four times as much. Instead
of reducing the number of cows kept,
add at least twenty-five per CENT
more Give pail of freshly skinned
milk with feed ration, graded to the
butter capacity of each individual cow.
as often as the herd come to be milked.
This will be carried back to the fields
fl ON which it was taken and dis
tributed more evenly than could pos
sibly be done by manure spreader,
with compensating results sure to fol-
low. Butter dairy farmers have the
key to the situation in their own
hands The false and wild grasses
will by this treatment disappear In
much less time than was ever required
to obtain their present foothold under
the old system. They can no more ex-
ist and flourish on a fertile soil than
the tame and nutritious grasses on o
sterile one.-Henry Morse, in N. Y.
Tribune.