582 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



HOW CAN CATTLE AND HOGS BE MANAGED TO MAKE THEM 



PROFITABLE. 



Discussion by Abe Roe, before Mahaska County Farmers' Institute. 



Take it fifteen years ago this subject cound be handled very easily, but 

 with our increased price of land we have got to be very careful in order to 

 make interest upon our investments. I will take as an illustration a 160 

 acre farm, and as all successful business men have got to lay a foundation 

 or we cannot be successful, just so with the farmer. The farmer has got 

 to lay a foundation in order to be successful. I will divide this farm or 

 land into fields as follows: I will divide it into four thirty acre fields. One 

 25 acre field, one 10 acre field and one 5 acre field. I will use the five 

 acre field for my buildings, orchard, truck patch, feed lots ana garden. 



I will take up now the hog proposition first. I am a little better 

 acquainted with that than the cattle proposition. In the first place I will 

 use the ten acre field for meadow. I will use the twenty-five and thirty 

 acre field for pasture, and I would aim to have my pasture about half 

 red clover. We have a white clover but I would aim to have it red clover. 

 Now, we as farmers, know about two years is the life of our red clover. 

 Ine way I would do that, in the spring, of the year when the frost has 

 dried the ground sufficient and the sun has dried the ground sufficiently, 

 I would run over that ground with a disc harrow set at an angle 

 of twenty or twenty-five degrees and follow it with clover. I would 

 then follow that with a smooth harrow so as to give me a good seed 

 bed; and then by the time the timothy and blue grass is large enough to 

 turn the stock up6n it in the spring the clover would be sufficiently rooted 

 so the stock would not stamp it out. Another thirty acres I would sow 

 in oats and clover, sowing the clover in the proportions about one bushel 

 to seven or eight acres. Before I sowed my oats in the spring of the year 

 I would take them to the fanning mill and I would fan out one-half, and I 

 would take the small seed, using nothing only the large grain. One rea- 

 son it will give you a larger yield and another reason it will give a strong 

 straw and stand up against a heavier wind. The other land remaining 1 

 would use for corn. I would pulverize the soil as fine as I could get it, so 

 if we had a dry season the soil would retain the moisture as much as pos- 

 sible. I would be careful in selecting my corn, would examine the seed 

 to use the best germinating corn. About the first of May, I would regulate 

 the drop of the corn planter by the size of my kernels of corn. I always 

 prefer three, and then I would not be afraid of the weather killing my 

 corn. I have not had for a numbe«r of years a poor stand of corn. Good 

 seed, that is thoroughly dried, never allowed to freeze, will bring forth 

 a good strong sprout and that will give you under ordinary conditions a 

 good strong stalk and likewise a strong ear. 



Now I would aim to keep about six or eight good heavy brood mares 

 of the draft type, on the farm. I would raise as many colts as I could and 

 at the same time use those mares to do my farming, and whenever I saw 



