30 The Bulletin. 



PEOBLEMS IN STOCK-KAISING. 



By a. L. FRENCH, Rockingham County, N. C. 



The importance of live-stock growing has been preached to our farmers for 

 generations as being an honorable occupation, a pleasant and profitable means 

 to secure a living, and to lay up something for the rainy day that is almost sure 

 to come to all of us sooner or later. But I very much doubt if the importance 

 of this great industry along another line — that of maintaining the fertility of 

 our soils — lias been brouglit as forcibly as it should be to the minds of our people 

 engaged in agricultural pursuits. And I will say that this subject of maintain- 

 ing soil fertility is the most important matter that confronts our people to-day, 

 as our soil is the only dependable resource we have in the United States. It is 

 claimed by men who have made a study of these matters that one hundred years 

 will see the end of our coal supply. In fifty years at the present rate of consump- 

 tion our iron mines will have become exhausted. Our oil and natural gas is going 

 the same road at a rapid pace. So is it not time for our people to pause and 

 consider how our present great and rapidly increasing population is to be 

 employed and fed when these our great natural resources that employ millions 

 of our people have become exhausted ? Where, then, can we turn unless to the 

 soil, our only resource that cannot be entirely exhausted by man's greed for 

 dollars? 



The history of our country proves that only where stock-growing and feeding 

 is made one of the principal lines along which the farmers are working is the 

 fertility of the soil maintained. Look the country oyer and see if this rule doesn't 

 hold good. If this be the case, isn't it time we fanners of North Carolina were 

 getting in line and doing our share toward the preservation of this our God-given, 

 heritage ? 



This live-stock subject may be divided into three sections. The first, the type 

 of animal to which we must feed this food — if we expect to reap a profit on our 

 labor — and the marketing of the finished product. In the matter of the food 

 supply the pasture is of first importance, as there is no question about pasturing 

 being by far the cheapest method which we can employ on the cheap lands of 

 North Carolina, at least, in the summer feeding of our animals. All over the 

 piedmont and western portions of North Carolina there are hundreds of thousands 

 of acres of land that can be profitably utilized only for grazing purposes. That 

 these lands are not being utilized in this way is one reason I am here to talk to 

 you and to bring this question more forcibly to your minds. 



I wish to give you an example or two of what has been done in my own neigh- 

 borhood during the past five years in the utilizing of poor worn lands in grazing 

 cattle. 



An acquaintance of mine purchased a poor farm in our section some ten years 

 ago. He employed local help for five years in the efi'ort to ggoiv crops for sale, 

 with the re.sult that he had several thousand dollars more invested in the farm 

 at the end of the five years than he had in the beginning, and his bank accoimt 

 showed no improvement. The farm also was getting poorer. He came to me 

 with the earnest request that I take the management of the place. I consented to 

 do so in connection with my own business, provided I be allowed to manage the 

 place as my judgment dictated. We made a trade, and the first thinsr 1 did was 

 to order $144 worth of barb-wire. With this we enclosed the part of 2.'ifl acres of 

 the farm that was not already fenced with a rail fence. I tlien went to Texas and 

 purchased sixty hisrh-grade beef heifers, 1 wo yeir-olds that were already bred to 

 pure-bred bulls. We got them home in .Tiinuarv. Fed them about fifty tons of 

 corn silage, a few tons of peavine hnv, and about April 1st turned them into 

 the 2o0-acre pasture. This land, I will say in passing, had not produced enough 

 above expenses to pay the taxes for five years, ^^■ell, wo sold the following 

 October 59 calves at twenty dollars each. Deducting the cost of the winter feed 



