Animals Recognize Good Soil Treatment

Measuring the effects of lime and fertilizer additions to the soil only in terms of increased bushels or tons fails to give us the fullest evaluation of what such soil treatments are doing. If we will turn, however, to the animals that must eat the forage or the grain produced on the treated soils, we may discover that they point out by their tastes and choices some effects that we do not appreciate. Animals will recognize soil treatment effects too small to be recorded as weight differences, as well as improvements in the crop quality lasting long after the soil treatment may have been forgotten.

An illustration of this fine taste for improved soil fertility even in animals of supposedly depraved appetite is reported by Mr. Burk, the county extension agent of Johnson County, who cites the experience by Cliff Long. Last fall Mr. Long turned his hogs out to hog down some corn. This was on a field in the far corner of which, 80 rods distant from the gate where the hogs entered, limestone had been used on a small area some years ago. To Mr. Long’s surprise, the animals went back and forth from the barn lot, the water, and the tankage supply at the gate, through about 80 rods of corn on unlimed soil to consume first the corn on the limed land.

“I don’t believe it,” you may say, but had you seen the hogs as Mr. Long and his neighbors saw both hogs and the field, you would no longer express doubt. You would take the testimony of these hogs about soil fertility even if the chemistry of the effects of limestone on the soil and on the corn plants may seem like only so much “hokus pokus” to you.

Hogs went through the unlimed part to select the limed part in hogging down the corn. Hogs know the soil fertility that makes the feed.

 

As a further testimony, the cows on the farm of E. M. Poirot, Golden City, Missouri, declare their ability as connoisseurs of finer fertility differences reflected in the spring barley pasture. Mr. Poirot’s barley was drilled last fall with an application per acre of 100 pounds of 32 per cent superphosphate through a tractor drill. This operation was carried out by drilling in “lands” and left the corners of the field rounded and partly undrilled during the main operation. In order to drill out these corners, a few rounds were made from the corners diagonally out into the field. This drilled a double dosage of the phosphate fertilizer over part of the field. In one of the drill rows in the main part of the field there was a very heavy application of fertilizer when a fertilizer gate remained open. This barley row was already much larger last fall.

This spring when the barley was pastured, these areas given, the heavier application of 200 pounds of phosphate per acre were taken by the cattle first, and that part of the field given only 100 pounds was left ungrazed distinctly right to the drilling line. The one drill row in the main part of the field given extra heavy treatment by the open gate on the fertilizer drill was also singled out and taken first by the cattle.

Doubling the application of fertilizer on barley by drilling out this corner last fall enticed the cows to graze it this spring (left) and forego that with less fertilizer (right).

 

Perhaps you may ascribe such discrimination to some other item than the fertilizer, but the cow knows her feed and can distinguish between difference in barley feed quality by soil treatments as small as hundred-pound applications of phosphate, as this report clearly demonstrates. Plants are sensitive with responses not recognized by the eye.

As a further illustration of the forage differences recognized by cattle, Mr. Poirot cites a case where the cattle selected a small area within 190 acres of virgin prairie pasture where 500 pounds of limestone per acre were drilled as a demonstration in 1928. He says, “The cattle have stayed on this smaller limed area this spring rather than graze over the entire 190 acres.” Here in this virgin prairie, the addition of so small an amount as 500 pounds of limestone drilled but lightly into the surface has left an effect on the virgin, native forage which even the supposedly dumb beasts still can recognize after almost 11 years. It suggests that liming some of our older pasture by an early spring drilling that doesn’t tear up the sod may make differences appreciated by the cow even if we don’t recognize them.

The animals confined to our farms are exercising the best of their judgment to make good use of their feed and are pointing out, whenever possible, that the feed is better as the soil fertility is higher. So far, they have pointed to lime and to phosphates as essential in making the feed better to their taste, and doubtless, to their more effective growth, milk production, and other body functions. As fast as we set conditions that will let them demonstrate that they can pass even better judgment than we can, they may point to other fertility items in which our soils are deficient for best feed production. Given a chance, our animals may teach us to appreciate our declining soil fertility.