CHAPTER SEVEN 



Must You Keep a Cow? 



IF you see a poor, run-down farm in this part 

 of the country you need not look in the barn to 

 know there are no cows in it. If there were no 

 other reason for them I would keep cows because 

 they are the backbone of the manure supply sys- 

 tem. Not only is manure expensive to buy but, 

 in these mechanized days, it is not easy to find for 

 sale at any price. And there is no substitute for it. 

 Perhaps one reason for this is its insistence; you 

 just have to take it out and spread it on the land 

 to get rid of it. Per pound of live weight the pig 

 is the biggest manure producer of the domestic ani- 

 mals; per capita he runs a poor second to the 

 cows. Five two hundred-pound pigs will produce 

 thirty thousand pounds a year; a single one thou- 

 sand-pound cow will go to twenty-seven thousand 

 pounds. The horse, by the way, is back among the 

 also-rans both in quantity and in the plant food 

 value of his offal. Five are a good many pigs to 

 carry on a home-use farm; and by the time a pig 

 reaches its mature production peak it is ready to 

 be eaten. But five cows and heifers are a normal 



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