r- 

 J 



I 



-I 

 I 

 I 



WORK IN FIELDS, WOODLOT, OCCASIONAL CHORES, OR MISCELLANEOUS 



Average 

 Man Hours 

 Per Week 



140 — 

 120 — 

 100 — 



80 — 



60 — 



40 — 



20 — 



Nov I Dec I Jan I Feb I Mar I Apr I May I June I July I Aug 



Fig. 1. On specialized dairy farms, efficient chore work is as important as 

 efficiency of field operations. It enables the operator to enlarge his 

 dairy herd and increase the total output from the farm. 



Sep 



seasonal labor requirements and to 

 handicap the efficient organization of 

 the dairy enterprise as an economic 

 unit. For instance, the operator who 

 has doubled the output of roughage 

 per man in the last 10 years and yet 

 made no progress on chore work finds 

 it impossible to work out an efficient 

 production unit. Similarly, the lack 

 of progress in chore work holds back 

 the output of the farm. In certain 

 competing areas, the operator has the 

 alternative of allocating a portion of 

 his resources to cash crops and can 

 easily tailor the amount of roughage 

 production to the livestock on his 

 farm. Most New Hampshire dairy- 

 men do not have this opportunity for 

 cash crop production and must place 

 gi-eater emphasis on balancing rough- 

 age and livestock. 



Much of the progress in the effi- 

 ciency of crop production has come 

 about from the adoption of new ma- 

 chines. The operator tends to pur- 

 chase progress in increased output 

 per man hour when he buys the ma- 

 chine. He has to make many read- 

 justments, to be sure, but change in 

 procedure is made easy by the novel- 

 ty of the new machine. In contrast, 

 while progress in chore work involves 

 some mechanization and the use of 



new gadgets, it is more dependent up- 

 on simplification of tasks, reorganiza- 

 tion of work procedures, remodeling 

 of barns to reduce travel, the ability 

 of the operator to drop old routines 

 and habits, and the will to concen- 

 trate on carrying out new procedures 

 and new timing sequences. These 

 are more difficult to achieve than 

 merely buying a machine. Yet in 

 modern competitive dairying they are 

 essential. 



Hours of Labor Per Day 



Historically, milk production has 

 been associated with long hours of 

 labor. The very nature of the enter- 

 prise has made adjustment to the 

 more reasonable hours of daily labor 

 and for days off for the operator and 

 the hired help difficult to achieve. La- 

 bor requirements in dairy chores tend 

 to be confining and inflexible. Certain 

 chore tasks. not only need to be done 

 seven days a week, but must be ac- 

 complished within rather narrow lim- 

 its of time. Thus the problem is more 

 complex than the total man hours in- 

 dicate. There is a need to fit the 

 chore work into a schedule and a time 

 sequence within the limitations of the 

 available labor. If the labor re- 



