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bloody butcher 50 - 60 bushels/acre on an average year; this
is high: avg total corn yield per acre in Iowa in 1935 was 39 bushels/acre reids yellow dent lhf 40/acre 1 bushel shelled corn = 56 lbs Corn yields however rarely topped 40 to 45 bushels per acre.
Wheat averaged 12-14 bu/acre, oats 18 to 20, and rye just a little less. Even the best farmers, given the extensive nature
of their farms and the comparatively small number of stock they could maintain, wouldn't have enough manure to adequately
fertilize all their fields. If a farmer housed his stock indoors during the winter, and
quite a few did not, this might allow for 45 to 60 tons of available manure. (10 head*50 lbs/day*30 days/month*6 months =
90,000 lbs. dung.) Few farmers likely recouped this much dung and what was gathered was stored outside where much of its value
was lost to the elements. Northeast Organic Farming Assn In the summer months especially, his layers consume only seven
pounds of feed per 100 chickens per day, costing roughly 77 cents per 100 birds. On other farms, Salatin says confined chickens
will consume up to 30 pounds per 100 per day, for a cost of $2.10 per 100 birds. "That's significant savings," he adds. Using a system he loosely modeled after Booker T. Whatley's
Clientele Membership Club, Salatin sells roughly 6,000 broilers a year at $1.20 per pound, live weight, to more than 300 families
each year. The average bird weighs about 4 to 4.6 pounds. Having slightly more than $2 in expenses for each bird, Salatin
nets $2.80 a bird. 56 lb/bushel corn - 2240 lbs/acre wheat - 672 lbs/acre oats - 1008 lbs/acre rye - 1000 lbs/acre (slightly less than oats) |