STOCK RAISING. 355 



top, and covering (vith straw. As soon as the straw rotted my dram was 

 spoiled, and I had to take it up. I re-laid without straw and have had 

 no trouble since. 



STOCK EAISING. 



BY A. D. BANK OF DELTA. 

 [Read at the Charlotte Institute February 17, 1887. 



The circumstances and surroundings of the pioneer were not such as to 

 warrant the keeping of any but the most hardy animals. Stock now regarded 

 as superior, in pioneer times did not find anything worth living for and 

 usually died as the best way out. 



Making farms of the wilderness required the application of muscle from 

 beginning to end and muscle was in demand. It has not gone out of date 

 yet, but there is nowhere such a premium on muscle as in new timbered 

 countries. There everyone is rated on that scale. Even the schoolmaster 

 and domestic animals are rated on the scale of toughness. This was all right 

 and just as it should be for the times, but the mischief was in educating the 

 rising generation. I can well remember seeing at the first fair held at Hast- 

 ings, by the Barry county Agricultural Society, a Short Horn bull weighing 

 2,444 lbs. He was owned and exhibited by Judge Hannah, of Irving township, . 

 Barry county, who took great pride in exhibiting him. 



The geeral verdict was, "The Durhams are a big breed, but they ain't 

 tough; the judge paid a big price for his animal and fooled away his 

 money." I went home from the fair with that impression, and I presume 

 every other boy who attended that fair was taught the same lesson and the 

 lesson was proven by demonstration. The Durhams could not live through 

 the winter on straw and maple browse or marsh hay without shelter. It was 

 a question of the "survival of the fittest " and the Durham did not prove 

 fit to survive. 



A short time after that fair a report was circulated that a man near Ionia 

 had traded his ox team for a pair of Shanghai chickens. Perhaps some of 

 you know of the circumstance. What an excitement that created! The 

 biggest fool on earth had been identified. 



In the spring of 1861 I bought a pair of six months' old Suffolk pigs, and 

 when it was known that I had paid 115.00 I had plenty of callers to see- 

 them. The verdict was: "Too fine; not hair enough and too short nose; 

 wouldn't shack well." I had paid five or six dollars more for the pigs than 

 they were worth for pork, and there was another fool added to the list. 



Things were different then from now. The farmer boy had an uneven 

 hance all around. If a village clerk came to visit our school the girls were 

 all after him, and that made us wish we were clerks instead of farmers, and 

 our ambition to get an education was that we might become merchants or 

 professional men. If a young man came home to the farm after having com- 

 pleted a college course, his name was added to the list of fools. He had 

 thrown atvay his time and money in going to school. Any man that could 

 read and write and figure interest had all the education a farmer needed. 



