76 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



for less than $2 per day, including board, and will not average to cut 

 and spread more than one acre per day, of grass yielding one or two 

 tons per acre. A pair of horses, weighing one thousand pounds each, 

 are sufficiently heavy to work the machine in any grass, and if well 

 trained, it is less labor than to draw the plough in common stubble 

 land, at the depth of seven or eight inches, or harrow the same hours 

 per day. If the horses are well kept, say with six quarts of Indian 

 meal and sixteen pounds of good hay each per day, they would wor]c the 

 machine, if no accident happened to them, ten hours per day as long 

 as they could eat their allowance. The machine will do equally as 

 good work at a speed of two and one-half miles per hour or more, at 

 which rate it will not take more than fifty minutes to cut one acre. 

 Most horses will walk three miles per hour with ease. I have not 

 used oxen on the machine, but have seen them used by others when 

 they performed the work well. I do not consider it economy to use 

 them for various reasons : first, they cannot be driven so true, and will 

 not travel so fast, and but few oxen can stand the heat of good hay 

 weather ; and what is more important, it costs much more to keep 

 them, in which I am aware many good farmers will not agree with me ; 

 but such have not fed by weight and measure. 



I have kept from six to ten oxen and four horses for the past five 

 years, until last spring, when I dispensed with oxen altogether. I 

 have learnt by actual experience the cost of keeping to be as follows : 

 A pair of horses, weighing twelve hundred pounds each, will work 

 every fair day during the year ten hours, and keep fat on six quarts 

 of Indian meal and sixteen pounds of good hay each, per day. A 

 pair of oxen, girting nine feet or weighing thirty or thirty-two hun- 

 dred weight, will require four quarts of Indian meal and thirty pounds 

 of good hay each, per day, provided they are kept at work as many 

 hours as the horses. One pair of horses, of the above description, 

 will perform as much work, on many farms, taking the whole year, as 

 two pair of oxen, such as plowing, harrowing, drawing manure, hay, 

 wood, &c., especially if much of the work is on the road ; besides, it 

 requires two men to work the two pair of oxen in many kinds of 

 work, where one would work the horses. The cost of keeping a pair of 

 horses as above, would be, at prices in this vicinity, at this time, 

 thirty- two pounds of hay per day, at $25 per ton, forty cents, twelve 

 quarts of Indian meal, at $1.12 per bushel, forty-two cents, total, 

 eighty-two cents, or $299.30 for one year. Keeping one pair of oxen 

 one day, sixty pounds of hay, $25 per ton, seventy-five cents, eight 

 quarts of Indian meal, $1.12 per bushel, twenty-eight cents, total, for 

 one day, $1.03, or $375.95 for one year. 



