444 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



a source of wealth to a large number of farmers, notwithstand- 

 ing some losses from cholera. 



"In determining the relative profits of the several products 

 of our farms or of a single product, we must take a series of 

 years, and the farmers who have adhered to the business of 

 raising and feeding hogs have found it profitable. While this 

 business is so generally and so well understood, I will venture 

 the single criticism that as a rule hogs are kept too exclusively 

 on corn, and would do better to use more grass and clover. 



"I have said we must have good stock. In most localities 

 where hogs are a leading product of the farm there has been 

 such marked improvement that but little trouble or expense 

 will be required to furnish the farmer with a good stock of hogs. 



"As regards cattle, the case is different. The farmer who 

 keeps five or six cows, will say he can not afford to buy a thor- 

 oughbred short-horn bull; but five or six farmers living on con- 

 tiguous farms can unite in the purchase of one. In my neigh- 

 borhood there are two groups of farmers operating on this plan. 

 The sire should be changed once in three years, and at the end 

 of twelve years most of the stock on these farms will be seven- 

 eights and fifteen-sixteenths short-horn. These would be called 

 high grades, and are as good for grazing and feeding as the 

 thoroughbreds. Men largely engaged in raising and feeding 

 cattle find from experience that the grain and grass that will 

 grow two hundred pounds on a scrub steer will make three 

 hundred pounds on a high grade. My own experience and ob- 

 servation assure me that the same treatment which will make 

 a scrub steer weigh twelve hundred pounds at three years old, 

 will bring the high grade to fifteen hundred pounds at the same 

 age, and the grade will bring five cents a pound as readily as 

 the scrub will four. One is worth seventy-five dollars, the 

 other forty-eight. This illustrates the difference between the 

 highly improved and the common, in all the meat producing 

 animals. It is easy to see that there may be a profit in one 

 when there would be none in the other. 



" I believe it is only those who have been raising stock of 

 an inferior quality, who think there is no profit in stock grow- 



