Missouri Farm Management Association. 283 



When the colts are delivered they are put into a darkened 

 stable, well bedded with straw, plenty of good water and all the 

 little delicacies to eat they could wish for except the mother's 

 milk. I buy only mare mules of the sugar type. They become 

 quiet in about a week and are then turned out in the pasture 

 during the day unless the weather is very stormy. They are 

 put in the barn every night and fed liberally on oats and clover 

 hay with a little corn. There are two ways of handling these 

 sugar mules — one to keep them on grain feed both summer and 

 winter and mature and market them in the fall after they are 

 two-year-olds in the spring. The other way is to break them 

 when they are two or coming three years old, work them in 

 their three-year-old summer, fatten and sell in the fall. The 

 latter way is the one we usually follow because we need their 

 work. We change our teams every year but keep the same 

 names. Last year we sold 40 three-year-olds for $225 each 

 and 40 two's at $220 each. If we did not need them to work 

 I think the two-year-olds make the most money. Handling 

 them in that way is a kind of "baby beef" proposition. Be- 

 fore these mules are loaded to go south we give them a small 

 brand "R" on the left jaw. They make the journey of 1,000 

 miles unattended and usually get through in pretty good con- 

 dition. I wish I could spend my whole hour talking and 

 praising this much neglected beast. It was neither cattle, hogs, 

 horses nor sheep, but mules that have made Missouri famous. 



While I am passing through the country buying these colts 

 I always have my eye open for good high-grade calves of the beef 

 breeds. I usually buy 50 good calves every fall, and I am about 

 as particular to get a good kind of calves as I am about the colts. 

 These calves are wintered well and kept growing for a year. 

 We begin feeding them shock corn as soon as the grass is about 

 gone. In February or March of the spring they are two years 

 old; they are put on feed and are fed on grass during the sum- 

 mer till they will bring $100 per head, then sold. This rotation 

 gives us about 150 cattle and 120 mules on the place most all the 

 time. We keep a few good cows to milk and raise roan calves. 



We keep about twenty brood sows from which we figure on 

 raising from 100 to 120 pigs twice each year. These hogs are 

 fed out along with the mules and cattle. As soon as we sell a 

 drove of fat hogs we have another bunch of feeders on the other 

 side of the lane squealing to come across to the feed pasture. If I 

 were forced to handle only one kind of stock I would take hogs 



