482 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



the waste they picked up. Twenty okl brood sows have been living on 

 the alfalfa and around the alfalfa stacks. Since September, 220 hogs 

 cleaned up ten acres of corn, and cleaned up all the ground from which 

 the silo had been filled. Did the fence around that quarter pay interest 

 this year? Why, it will pay cost twice over. This is what the fence is 

 doing in the fall and winter. What do you suppose it paid this summer, 

 when the hogs ran on the alfalfa? 



I spent twenty years of my life at sea, and had command of a ship for 

 twelve years, and many a man asks me how on earth a man brought 

 up at sea can take to farming; and yet, when you think of it, how 

 much of my sea life is useful on the farm? In the days of sailing ships, 

 we were out of sight of land for four months, and we had a certain 

 allowance of provisions to last us the trip. No running around to the 

 corner grocery if we ran short. We had to make ends meet, and so 

 there was no guesswork. It taught us to use the scales. For weeks 

 before we arrived off a port, T would figure for every possible emergency 

 that might arise, for, although a large sailing vessel is all right in the 

 open sea, she is a ticklish proposition in narrow waters. I would figure 

 on being caught in a lee shore with a gale of wind, being becalmed, or 

 head winds, and of dirty weather. I learned to figure before a thing 

 happened, and not after. We learned at sea how to handle men. We 

 figure a man hired for labor furnishes labor but not brains, and we 

 do not make the mistake so many Iowa farmers make in thinking they 

 can hire labor and brains for $30 a month. The boss must furnish the 

 brains. We learned that it took 400 tons of coal to make a steamship go 

 twenty miles an hour, but it took 600 tons of coal to make her go twenty- 

 one. In other words, whenever you work under forced draft it costs too 

 much money. 



Now, the same principles will apply to cattle feeding, for whenever 

 a man attempts to put two and a half or three pounds per day on 

 a steer, he is working the steer under forced draft, and the last half 

 pound of gain eats up all the profit. We have to get as far away 

 from feeding for speculation and big gains. The one idea should be in 

 feeding cattle to utilize what is now practically waste; to make beef 

 from fodder straw, silage, common stacks, and simply add to these 

 enough corn, clover, alfalfa or oil meal to make a balanced ration. This 

 does not mean a big daily gain. Many of our agricultural papers are 

 lamentably weak on the advice they give correspondents who write them 

 on how to feed 1,000-pound steers. They invariably talk about feeding 

 eighteen to twenty pounds of corn per day, and about two and a half 

 to three pounds gain per day on a steer, entirely overlooking the fact 

 that the class of men who write them for advice are mostly men who 

 have never fed before, and that this class of men should not be advised 

 to make beef from corn with a little hay roughness, but from rough- 

 ness with a little corn or oil meal added, simply selling his crops and re- 

 ducing his speculation; and, above all things, the cattle should be sold 

 every time there is a profit, irresnectivo of whether they are fat or not. 



Keep in front of you all the time the idea that you do not want to 

 speculate. You want to sell your crop at a market price or better, and 

 from the manure raise a little larger crop next season. Play the game 



