880 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



and the sun seems to lose his power, and every thing is frozen 

 up tight for from eight to ten weeks, and between the first 

 weeks of November and the last of March a half-dozen or more 

 storms sweep over the land, bringing suffering and death to un- 

 sheltered, poorly-fed stock. 



I will now write of my own experience with a herd of Texas 

 cattle direct from the trail, in one of the worst winters ever known 

 in Central Kansas. The herd was a mixed one of three hun- 

 dred and forty head bought at Solomon City in September, 1871, 

 at $13.50 per head. All seemed to be doing well until the 17th 

 of November, when we were struck by the fiercest blizzard that 

 I have ever seen, and which lasted seventy-two hours. It be- 

 gan with rain and sleet, but soon turned intensely cold. At the 

 close of the storm I had six cows and one bull dead, while the 

 whole herd was encased in ice and looked as if death had a 

 fast grip on the most of them. The last two days of the storm 

 I fed the best I possibly could in the corral by cutting from 

 the sheltered side of a long rick of hay, built on its north-west 

 side for a wind-break. Just as soon as possible I let the cattle 

 out of the pen for water, but had to cut ice ten inches thick, 

 and the cattle, not being accustomed to ice, were timid about 

 approaching the water-holes, so that it was fully a week before 

 they would drink as our native cattle would have done. I fed 

 all the hay they would eat, yet every day added one or more 

 to the number of the dead, and to my surprise six bulls died be- 

 fore the close of the year. 



During all those weeks of frost and ice there was not one 

 pleasant, sunny day; but the ice on our water was constantly 

 growing thicker, so that I found it impossible to water suffi- 

 ciently, and on New Year's morning I moved the herd about 

 seven miles to running water and a stalk-field, where they learned 

 to eat corn. From that time until February 22d I moved four 

 times to get hay and stalk-fields. I also fed fifteen bushels of 

 ears of snapped corn every morning. The weather having mod- 

 erated, I returned home February 22d. I still fed hay and corn 

 until the grass was sufficiently grown to afford good grazing, 

 which that spring was well along in April. 



