SOILING: Its Philosophy and Practice. Figs. 806, 807.
The soiling system consists in feeding farm animals a succession of green fodder crops in the stable during the entire summer period. This system, which has long been practiced by European dairy-farmers, became known in this country mainly through two admirable essays on "Soiling of Cattle," by Josiah Quincy, prepared for the Massachusetts and Norfolk Agricultural Societies, and published in the Transactions of these societies for 1820 and 1852, respectively. The advantages of the soiling system enumerated by this writer are, briefly stated, as follows: (1) Three times as much feed can be produced per acre of land by this system as when the land is pastured.
(2) The feed is better utilized by cattle, as there is no waste through treading-down, fouling, and the like.
(3) The cattle are more comfortable and in better condition when fed green feeds regularly and liberally in the stable than when left to find their own food on the pasture, with the uncer tainties as to the condition of the pasture, weather and the like.
(4) The system is therefore conducive to the production of a large and even flow of milk (or a uniform increase in live weight, in the case of fattening stock).
(5) There is a great increase in the quantity and quality of the manure, since all the manure from the stock is saved, thus placing the farmer in the best position to maintain the fertility of his land.
p3) The necessity for interior fences is largely done away with.
Later experience and the results of carefully conducted feeding experiments have fully estab lished the assertions made for the soiling system by Quincy, especially for feeding dairy cattle. In addition to the advantages stated above. it should be noted that the system does not call for any machinery or devices that are not already found on nearly all dairy-farms.
Against these points in favor of the system, we have the disadvantage that it increases consider ably the labor connected with the feeding and the management of the herd, since the green feed must be cut and placed before the stock in the barn several times a day. In rainy weather or when fields are muddy the harvesting of the crops also presents difficulties. But these objections are
more than offset by the advantages, which bring about a greater production of crops from the land and a better utilization of the crops, hence greater returns from the animals kept. In regard to the question of the better saving of the manure by the soiling system, Quincy gives as his experience that it alone is "a full equivalent for all the labor and expense of raising, cutting, and bringing in the food, feeding, currying and other care of the cattle." The production of soiling crops implies intensive methods of farming, since immense quantities of feed are produced by this method, in some cases exceeding twenty to twenty-five tons per acre, and the land may also in the case of some crops be sown to two different crops in the same season, as will be shown presently. To guard against soil exhaustion, heavy applications of manure, supple mented by commercial fertilizers, must therefore be made. It is also well to resort occasionally to green-manuring in order to prevent a reduction of the humus content of the soil; this is preferably done by plowing under the second crop of clover or other legumes so as to take advantage of the high nitrogen-content of these crops.
Soiling is of special value in regions where high land values prevail and only small areas are avail able for pasture. As the price of farm lands in creases it is likely to become of more and more importance. The system has been recommended primarily for dairy cows, but is also valuable in steer- and sheep-feeding. It has been adopted, however, only to a limited extent in the past by American dairy-farmers and others because of the large amount of labor involved in feeding stock in this way, and owing to the fact that our farmers have generally had abundant pasturage. It is less likely than ever to become a general practice in the future, owing to the introduction of the silo during the last few decades and to the use of summer silage (q. v.) as supplementary feed to scant pastures during the latter part of the summer season.