Live Stock Breeders' Association. 237 



amount to three and a half tons, which, at $2.27 per ton, is worth 

 $7.95. 



A wise farm economy requires that every bushel of grain and 

 every pound of hay shall be fed to animals. The resulting manure 

 under good methods of farm management will return 80 per cent, 

 of the original fertilizer value of the foods to the soils. The manure 

 thus returned to the land, together with the natural disintegration 

 of the soil and with possibly a small application of mineral fer- 

 tilizers with a rational rotation of crops, will unquestionably in- 

 crease the productiveness of 90 per cent, of the soils of the middle 

 west. There is, therefore, ample justification for the feeding of all 

 crops grown on the farm to some kind of farm animals from the 

 standpoint of soil fertility alone. 



Animal husbandry, however, is bound to be a controlling factor 

 in modern systems of farm management for other reasons than 

 merely soil fertility. We must continue to use animals as prime 

 motors. There is no immediate prospect of displacing horses by 

 mechanical motors. The horseless age is farther away than ever 

 before in the history of this country. There has never been so large 

 a number of horses per capita in the civilized world as at the 

 present time. The demands for horses were never greater. In the 

 United States the development of horse breeding and the produc- 

 tion of good horses on farms has been co-extensive with the develop- 

 ment of automobiles and other mechanical motors. The last few 

 years of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th century 

 have seen the perfection, production and use of thousands of auto- 

 mobiles for pleasure vehicles and for city drayage. It is a sig-* 

 nificant fact that during this period we have also enjoyed the great- 

 est development of horse breeding operations ever known in this 

 country. In 1850 for every horse or mule on farms in the United 

 States there were 4.8 persons. In 1900 the supply of horses had 

 increased so that there was one horse or mule for every 3.8 persons 

 in this country. It is safe to predict that the time will never come 

 when we can dispense with horse power to any great degree on 

 the farms and in the smaller villages of this country. 



The use of animals for food is not recent, but the largely in- 

 creasing demand for meat products among civilized peoples has 

 created a need for animals and their products unprecedented 

 in the history of the world. According to Hunt, "during the last 

 half of the last century horses and mules have increased two times, 

 neat cattle about three times — milk cows rather less, and other 

 cattle rather more than three times — while sheep and swine have 



