14 DEEDING FARM ANIMALS 



Where they are to give the highest possible return, they 

 must have food supplied them at certain intervals. The 

 owner must in some way supply this food, and should do 

 it as cheerfully and as faithfully as the uncomplaining 

 mother prepares food from day to day for the household. 

 Work horses need currying from day to day, cows must 

 be milked at least twice a day and stables must be cleaned 

 daily, thus entailing the blessed necessity of laboring more 

 or less every day in the year. 



The proper preparing of foods for winter feeding us- 

 ually involves much labor. It may and does usually in- 

 clude such processes as grinding grain, shredding or chaf- 

 fing fodders, slicing or pulping roots, soaking, steaming or 

 boiling foods for certain classes of live stock, and blend- 

 ing foods so as to increase their efficiency when fed. The 

 labor thus created gives employment, and where wisely 

 directed, should prove remunerative. 



Growing farm stock exercises a salutary influence on 

 the frequently vexatious question of farm labor: (i) By 

 creating employment for farmhands through all the year ; 

 (2) by adding to the permanency of such labor, and (3) 

 by the bearing which it has upon the price of labor. 



When farm hands are only employed for a portion of 

 the year, but one of two results must follow: they must 

 remain idle through a part of th^ year, or secure employ- 

 ment in some other line of work, and at a season when 

 employment is hard to get, that is, in the winter. Live 

 stock call for more attention in winter than in summer, 

 and thus necessitate the employment of labor at that 

 season. 



Permanency of employment must be given to the farm 

 laborer who is to remain in this line of work, and who is 

 to excel in the same. It is unreasonable to expect any 

 one to continue in any line of work which furnishes em- 

 ployment for only a portion of the year. The best farm 

 laborers, thus treated, must drift into other lines of work. 

 Those only will remain whose unstable habits unfit them 

 for permanency in any line of work. 



