SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 779 



USES AND ABUSES OF PASTURES. 



J, N. Dunn, before Linn County Farmers' Institute. 



What is a pasture and what is it for? 



My ideal pasture would be a field enclosed with a good woven wire 

 fence 48 inches high, with a sharp barbed wire on top. The openings 

 should be closed with gates made of boards. The ground should be roll- 

 ing and uneven, the higher ground to furnish the best feed in wet times 

 and the lower, which should be a little too cold and wet for corn, in the 

 dry times. The soil should have a tendency to clay and never have had 

 a plow touch it. The ground should be covered with a dense growth of 

 blue grass at all seasons of the year. On the north side should be a 

 thick growth of timber for the protection of stock in winter. 



I think the nearer the a pasture comes to this the more satsifactory 

 and profitable it will be. Such a pasture will fiurnish all the necessary 

 feed to colts over one year old, and horses not at hard work ten to twelve 

 months of the year; stock cattle over one year old, dry cows and sheep 8 

 to 10 months of the year; milk cows 6 to 8 months; and hogs quite an 

 amount of the best of feed. 



To indicate somewhat of the uses and abuses of pastures let us take 

 an illustration. A and B are neighbors. Their pastures join, are about 

 of the same size, and they have about the same amount of stock. The 

 spring is very favorable for the growth of grass. B walks out in his 

 pasture and sees the overabundance of grass anl says to himself, I can 

 just as well keep as much more stock here. He goes out and buys a 

 few head paying a good deal more than they are worth, because nearly 

 everyone has plenty of pasture and wants to keep what he has. 



Haying time comes. B sees places in the pasture where it is about as 

 good moving as in his meadow. He concludes he will not let that grass 

 go to waste that way, so he hires more help and puts it into the barn or 

 stack, thinking all the time what slip-go-easy if not shiftless farmer A 

 is, for he has not bought another animal nor done anything to save the 

 grass that is going to waste in his pasture. But A is having different 

 thoughts. He is thinking there may come a long dry spell and likely 

 the stock will eat about all the grass before grass grows again next spring, 

 or if it does lie there it will protect the roots, and even if some of it does 

 rot it will be a fine fertilizer right where he wants it. He will save the 

 expense of making it into hay and will not have to pay a man about 

 $1.25 per day, including board, to do half a day's work running a $100 

 manure spreader to get the manure back on the ground; nor will it go 

 with the wash of the barnyard down into the slough on to the creek and 

 be lost. 



The last of July comes. No rain. The stock keep eating but the grass 

 does not grow. The dry spell continues. The feed is getting short in 

 B"s pasture, the flies are bad. With empty stomachs gnawing on the 

 inside and the flies on the outside his stock is restless and uneasy wander- 

 ing about, trying to find something with which to satisfy their hunger. 



