452 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



accept the lowest price named — if we go further and make allowance for farmers 

 who feed their dogs on meat produced by themselves, and call it twenty-five 

 cents per week, or the paltry doling out of a microscopic cent's worth at each 

 mealo the average cost of a dog's keeping for a year will be thirteen dollars. 



The assertion of a farmer that his dog's keeping costs him nothing will not 

 bear examination. Farmers who buy little, yet live well, do not know what 

 their living really costs. Their surplus products find a ready market ; every- 

 thing they eat represents the price for which it might be sold ; not the city 

 price, but the home value. There is no need of waste in a family sufficient to 

 keep a pack of dogs, or even a single dog ; they will not eat vegetables, except, 

 perhaps, potatoes saturated with grease, to prevent starvation; and meat is now 

 an expensive commodity. Besides, this waste, of whatever kind, is all avail- 

 able and valuable for the pigs. Of so much cheaper material is the feed of a 

 pig than that of a dog, that comparison is scarcely fair ; yet S. Edwards Todd, 

 a well-known agricultural writer in New York, has estimated the cost to the 

 farmer of keeping a dog one year as equivalent to the cost of giving the weight 

 of one hundred pounds to a pig. At present prices of pork, such a pig would 

 be worth $10 at least. 



Then, in view of the price paid for boarding. dogs, the cost of keeping large 

 numbers of them in cities, their exclusive consumption of meat, and even of a 

 comparison with the value of "waste" fed to hogs, let the estimate of twenty- 

 five cents per week be reduced nearly twenty-five per cent., and let dog rations 

 be commuted at less than a cent per meal, and call the general average through- 

 out the land $10 per year; then the keeping of three millions of dogs of the 

 loyal States would be $30,000,000. 



The loss of sheep by dogs may be closely approximated. For a series of 

 years, in Ohio, the average of ascertained damages was $111,548 per year, when 

 sheep were very low in price. In 1863 the ascertained loss was $144,658. The 

 secretary of the New York State Agricultural Society estimates the loss in Nev 

 York in 1862 at 50,000 sheep, worth $175,000. This is a larger loss than tha 

 of Ohio with a less Humber of sheep. Higher proportional estimates than that 

 of Ohio have also been made for Maine. These are eastern States ; the western 

 States are still more exposed to the ravages of dogs. Then it is a moderate 

 assumption to take Ohio as a basis for the country. As Ohio had 4,448,229 

 sheep in 1862, the loyal States 23,000,000 in round numbers, and the average 

 loss of that State was 40,764, the entire loss would be 229,102 in killed; and 

 a similar calculation upon the basis of 25,483 injured in Ohio would show a 

 total of 143,219 maimed. At the present prices of sheep, an average for the 

 entire country cannot reasonably be placed at less than $5, which would make 

 the total loss in killed $1,145,510. The damage to the remainder has generally 

 averaged in Ohio about three-fifths of the value of the animal. This would 

 make the total loss of sheep injured $429,657 ; total loss of killed and injured, 

 $1,575,167. No addition is made for increase of sheep since 1862, (at least 

 30,000,000, instead of 25,000,000 ;) let the growing watchfulness of their in- 

 terests and the increasing restraint upon dogs be allowed to counterbalance 

 such increase. 



The account against dogs, thus far made out, stands as follows : 



Keeping 3,000,000 dogs $30, 000, 000 



Sheep killed 1, 145, 510 



Sheep injured 429, 657 



31,575, 167 



It is not considered unreasonable to make nearly as large an estimate for 

 cost of litigation occasioned, for cattle bitten, hogs worried, fowls killed, egga 



