Excerpt from The Production and Utilization of Manure on Illinois Dairy Farms

Dairy farming is generally considered to be particularly well adapted to the maintenance of soil fertility and the building up of depleted soils because of the relatively small amounts of plant foods which are removed from the farm by the sale Of milk or cream. It is usually assumed that the rest of the fertilizing constituents of the crops are returned to the soil in the manure; an assumption which is far from the truth as regards the majority of Illinois dairy, farms.

The amount Of manure produced annually by farm animals varies widely because Of differences in the amount and kind of feed con sumed and the efficiency with which the feed is utilized by the animals. Estimates of the annual production of manure are, for the most part, based upon feeding experiments in which the excrement of one or more animals has been weighed for periods ranging from one to ten days. The average production per day, for these periods, multiplied by 365 has usually been taken as the average annual production. In the case of dairy cows, the feeding experiments have usually been con ducted when the cows were producing heavily on full feed, and the estimates of the annual production of manure are probably somewhat greater than the amounts actually produced.

In planning systems of cropping and soil treatment looking toward the maintenance of fertility by the use of farm manure, it has been customary to use these estimates of production. The difficulty in so using them, however, is the fact, shown by numerous studies, that great losses of both soluble plant foods and organic matter result from the very common, wasteful methods of handling manure. In Illinois it is the common practice of dairymen to pile the manure in the barn yard as it is produced, and to haul it to the fields as time and field conditions permit. When it is left loosely piled, much of the fertilizing constituents are leached out by rain and melting snow and part of the organic matter is destroyed by fire-fanging. The tramping of manure into the mud of the barn lot by live stock also increases the loss.

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