62 PRIMARY RESULTS 



the facts, and only where all the horses are home-bred can 

 a uniform figure be applied. Bought horses must be depre- 

 ciated upon an individual figure based on the cost in each 

 case and the probable life. 



The following tables, like all others given in this volume, 

 are only to illustrate results and the figures in them cannot 

 be used as evidence of the average cost of keeping a horse. 

 They relate to costs in the year 1917-18 and certain facts 

 emerge from them. It is noteworthy, for example, that 

 cheapness in horse labour is dependent mainly on the 

 elimination, so far as possible, of idle days. The biggest 

 single factor in the cost of a horse-day is the proportion 

 of days worked to the maximum possible. Every one 

 realizes, of course, the importance of keeping horses busy, 

 but not every one thinks how heavily the cost of manual 

 labour is increased by idle horses. It is a common practice 

 at threshing time to take the horsemen from their work to 

 assist at threshing, and as this operation can only be per- 

 formed in dry weather it may be assumed that the horses 

 might usually be employed on threshing days. With manual 

 labour costing about Is. 6d. a day and horses about 5s. 

 a day the advantage of hiring casual labour for threshing, 

 even at high rates of pay, will be obvious when it is remem- 

 bered that the horseman whose horses are standing idle 

 represents a daily cost for the manual work performed by 

 him of some 185. On a midland-counties' farm, where the 

 maximum possible horse-hours in a certain week in Novem- 

 ber were 238, the time actually worked by horses was found 

 to be 87, owing to threshing operations, and the wastefulness 

 of the labour management in such a case is obvious. Again, 

 employers in certain cases object to paying Saturday over- 

 time to men willing to work, because overtime payments 

 are at a higher rate than those for ordinary time, but they 

 overlook entirely the fact that the Agricultural Wages 

 Board provides no overtime payments to the horses, and 

 that the cheapest horse labour on the farm is that performed 

 on Saturday afternoon at overtime rates. 



The variations in the number of working days from year 



