328 NEMAHA COUNTY, KANSAS. 



with a three board fence. The lumber was purchased at 

 wholesale rates, by the car load, at the rate of twenty-three 

 dollars per thousand feet. The posts used were chiefly buiT- 

 oak, and cost from ten to twelve and a half dollars per hundred. 

 The recent introduction of barbed wire enables the new settler 

 now to build a fence, more durable, and more cattle proof, with 

 about one-half the number of posts, and at a much less 

 expense for wire than for lumber purchased in this portion of 

 the West. Speaking of fencing, I venture the remark that 

 the Osage orange flourishes so well here, that farmers who 

 neglect to set out hedge at the earliest opportunity, make a 

 very great mistake. They can in four years after setting the 

 plants have a fence that will not drop down, and which can be 

 made a complete protection against the depredations of either 

 hogs or horses. 



ARRANGEMENT OP YARDS, SHEDS AND RACKS. 



As it was my intention to devote myself, almost exclu- 

 sively, to the raising of cattle and hogs, I reserved a very liberal 

 portion of my land to stock yards, and feed lots, with suitable 

 pasture for colts, calves and hogs. My cattle yards are made 

 on grounds sloping gently to the south. I have the necessary 

 amount of shedding and cow barns on north side of main cattle 

 j-ard. I use racks made of pine lumber to feed hay to the cattle. 

 The size of each is sixteen feet long, five and one-third feet 

 wide, two and one-half feet high, with a partition in the mid- 

 dle, rising two feet above the rack, making it equal to a single 

 rack thirty-two feet long. For top of rack I use two by four 

 inch stuff, which I bolt on to corner posts, made of four by four 

 inch stuff. I have recently put in feed boxes three feet wide» 

 by sixteen feet long, with tight bottom, in Vhich I give my 

 stock cattle their small daily allowance of oats, shelled corn^ 

 or ground feed. This I consider a very economical methods 

 and vastly superior to the more common way of throwing down 

 a lot of corn for the cattle to trample under their feet, or into 

 the mud. With a view to the future protection of the cattle 

 yards, I have planted a grove of nearly one thousand \Aalnut 



