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in debt ? I shall not go fully into this subject here, but I will 

 offer a few suggestions, in regard to the matter, which may be 

 entitled to consideration. First, then, the crops are badly spent, 

 or expended without judgment and carefulness, so that their ac- 

 tual value is by no means realized. There is often a great deal 

 of waste in feeding stock ; and the more abundance there is, 

 there is commonly the more waste. A horse is, for example, a 

 great consumer, requiring, as horses are ordinarily kept, from 

 four to five tons of hay besides grain. Now, two horses are of- 

 ten kept when one would suffice ; and on small farms, one is 

 frequently kept when none is needed. Besides the saving of 

 feed in keeping a horse, by great care in not giving him more 

 at a time than is necessary, and in not suffering him to waste 

 any, a saving of at least one third might be made by cutting his 

 food and giving him a mixed provender. In the next place, 

 farmers often keep supernumerary oxen and cows, which are a 

 great drawback upon their prosperity. Our winters are long. 

 The cost of feeding a yoke of oxen through the winter is very 

 great. So it is with a cow ; and she perhaps is dry for three or 

 four months, and it may be for three other months does not 

 yield enough to pay her keeping. In many cases a yoke of 

 oxen is kept through the six months of winter at the farmer's 

 mow, when there is hardly work enough to be done to keep 

 them in health, far less to pay anything towards their support. 

 In such cases, to use a phrase well understood among the 

 farmers, these animals, before the spring, will have " eaten their 

 own heads off;" that is, the hay and provender consumed in 

 keeping them will have been of more value than would pur- 

 chase others in the spring. Sometimes, in the next place, the 

 farmer, rather than sell a yoke of cattle in the fall, which he 

 proposes to turn off, for a low price, or what he deems less than 

 their value, will undertake to fat them in the stall, and but too 

 often gets, in the market for them in the spring, little more than 

 he could have obtained for them in the previous autumn. 



These are some of the ways of disposing of the products 

 of the farm so as to make farming a losing business. The far- 



