Buy More Fertilizer but Less Feed
MORE DOLLARS OF net profits result from more tons of higher quality feed grown right on the farm. When we think of hay we measure it in tons. When the cow measures the feed value of the hay she is judging it in terms of both quality and quantity. Accordingly as the quality of it is higher, her output goes up per unit of our measures of it.
An increasing number of farmers of Missouri are appreciating the fact that the quality of hay goes up as the fertility of the soil growing it goes higher. They are learning that hay to be had for purchase may not be of the same high quality they can grow on their own fertilized soils. They are building up the agriculture of the state by building up the soils in fertility that supports it. They are taking, therefore, to buying more lime and other fertilizers as indicated by the increased amounts used during the last few years. As a consequence they are purchasing less feeds; feeds that all too often are those some one believes to be too poor to give to his own livestock.
Such was the thinking back of the changes in his farm management that were brought about by Jess Mennick, Dallas County, Missouri. He began his operations six years ago on his own farm. This was purchased by help from the Farm Security Administration in the hope that his ten Jersey cows, as his principal source of income, would keep his family and liquidate his financial obligations in attempting to provide future security for it.
In going over the records at the close of the year, he and his supervisor came to the belief that he was spending what looked like an excessive sum for hay. Each year Mr. Mennick had thought that it would be the last one in which he would be forced to buy this extra feed. But he was about convinced that his farm would not raise all the hay he needed. Yet the hay he was purchasing was of questionable quality. He recognized the drop in milk flow when his cows went on it. He knew it was what other men had left over and what was grown on the areas of low fertility in the neighborhood. He finally came to the conclusion that he would grow his own forages and would improve them in quality—as well as get more quantity—by means of more fertilizer and lime treatments on his soil.
Mr. Mennick is now on a program of growing all the hay he needs. It was in the year 1945 that he made the shift from the necessity of buying feeds to the assurance of having surplus feeds. The use of almost a ton more of fertilizer was the main contributing factor that pushed the balance sheet of his feed account from the debit to the credit side. Here is the summary in brief of the swing-over in the records as it occurred:
Table 1
Summary of Mennick Farm Feed and Milk Produced in 1945.
|
Fertilizer purchased, lbs. |
4,500 |
|
Expenses for purchased hay |
00 |
|
Milk produced, lbs. |
74,500 |
|
Cows, milked |
10 |
|
Grazing arrangement: |
|
|
wheat pastured, acres |
15 |
|
sweet clover, acres |
8 |
|
sudan, acres |
7 |
|
Earnings per hour for his labor |
1.25 |
Mr. Mennick had in his barn on the inventory date in 1946 twenty-one tons of hay grown at home. On that date the preceding year he had six tons that had been hauled in as purchased. He appreciates the higher quality of his own hay as compared to purchased hay. He reports that as a consequence of this better quality in the hay and the grazing, his heifers have been developing better than in any previous time. They come to a better flow of milk with their first calves. His cows shed better in the spring and troubles at calving time are reduced.
Mr. Mennick is convinced that what may look like a shift in management to save the expense of purchased hay, in reality provides greater financial returns in the better foundation for production on the farm as a whole, namely the more fertile soil. He is buying more lime and other fertilizers because he grows not only more feed but better feed in terms of what it takes to have the cows make calves and more milk. For him the buying of fertilizers is better business than the buying of more feed.