1870. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



469 



PEOFIT IN" STOCK FEEDING, 



There is a general impression at the East that 

 fattening cattle and hogs at the West is very pro- 

 fitable business. An Ohio feeder states, as the re- 

 sult of experiment, that beef at 6^c. and pork at 

 9c. per pound, live weight, gave him 55^c. per 

 bushel for corn. An Illinois farmer says that, in 

 his section, they cannot afford to feed corn after 

 the price has reached fifty cents. A farmer in 

 Central Illinois, who is a prudent, careful and 

 economical man, shows by his books that he does 

 not get fair pay for his labor when he sells good 

 ciittle at 8c. per pound, live weight. — New England 

 Farmer. 



There is evidently something wrong in the above 

 statement. In fattening a large lot of hogs — say 

 from one to five hundred head — it requires eight 

 hundred and forty pounds of shelled corn to put 

 on one hundred and fifty pounds of pork. This 

 gives tbe feeder, at nine cents per pound, gross 

 weight, ninety cents per bushel. la small lots — 

 ten to forty head — the feeder can do much better. 

 Our corn in Kansas costs ns, on an average, 

 among the reasonably good farmers, a trifle less 

 than thirty-five cents per bushel. That our read- 

 ers may judge of the correctness of this statement, 

 we give our estimate. We take twenty-five acres 

 as the basis — about what one man will tend. 

 Rent of ground, at four dollars per acre, one hun- 

 dred dollars; seed, twelve dollars; labor, one 

 hundred and five dollars; team, seventy-five dol- 

 lars ; total, two hundred and ninety-five dollars. 

 We estimate that it requires seventy-nine days' 

 labor to plant, cultivate and gather twenty-five 

 acres. This estimate we know to be fair; but we 

 also know that there are scores of farmers who do 

 better than this. The average yield we place at 

 forty bushels (not ears) per acre. In feeding cat- 

 tle, it is difficult to estimate what the exact profit 

 is, from the fact that hogs and cattle are fed to- 

 gether, and rarely with sufficient care to determine 

 the proportion of grain each one gets ; but at the 

 prices above stated, we know that our farmers 

 realize from eighty-five cents to one dollar per 

 bushel for every bushel of corn fed to either hogs 

 or cattle. What say you, farmers ? — Kansas Farmer. 



In confirmation of his assertion that there 

 is something wrong in the statements of the 

 three practical feeders cited by us in the brief 

 article above quoted, the editor of the Kansas 

 Farmer presents an "estimate," ■which we 

 copy above in full. To our sense, both the 

 estimate and accompanying remarks have the 

 odor of the office rather than of the field, — 

 of theory rather than of practice. These 

 rose-colored, book-farming estimates of the 

 profitableness of the different branches of ag- 

 riculture, horticulture, &c., from strawberry 

 raising to stock feeding, are objectionable for 

 several reasons. They mislead, disappoint 

 and discourage the producer, they dissatisfy 

 and sour the consumer, and they discredit ag- 

 ricultural and horticultural reading. We do 

 not doubt that stock feeding in Kansas, as 

 well as in other Western States, is reasonably 

 profitable, when conducted by experienced 

 men, of good judgment and sufficient capi- 

 tal, and we have just as little doubt of the 



incorrectness of many newspaper estimates, 

 which lead consumers to feel that the prices 

 they pay for meats are extravagantly and ex- 

 tortinously high. When Western farmers pay 

 freight on corn to the Atlantic cities, and sell 

 it here for 75 to 90 cents a bushel, the cor- 

 rectness of the statements of the Illinois and 

 Ohio feeders, that they realize only 50 to 55 

 cents per bushel, when fed to stock, appears 

 to us more probable than the assumption by 

 the editor of the Kansas Farmer that 85 to 

 100 cents are realized by stock feeders in that 

 State. 



Crops at the West and elsewhere are sub- 

 ject to the influence of so many conditions of 

 season, insect depredations and other casual- 

 ties, that the estimate by the Kansas editor of 

 an average crop of forty bushels of shelled 

 corn to an acre, still further lessens our confi- 

 dence in his views of the subject. As bear- 

 ing on this subject, and also on that of the 

 cost of production, we copy from the Illinois 

 correspondence of the Country Gtntleman the 

 following statement, taking the liberty to itali- 

 cise a part of one sentence, in which perhaps 

 the Kansas Farmer will see "something evi- 

 dently wrong" : — 



"If the corn crop of 1870 shall not be of greater 

 proportion and excellence than any since 1860, it 

 will be more the fault of the machinery used to 

 make it than that of the dry summer. Over one- 

 half, perhaps two-thirds, of the whole State where 

 corn has been early planted, then weeded and 

 deeply and well cultivated, there is at present such 

 a stand and earing as has never been seen — no not 

 even in the memorable 1860. The machine plant- 

 ers, which chuck into the soil from six to ten 

 grains in a bunch, the scratching cultivators which 

 truly cultivate the weeds rather than the corn, the 

 sulky ploughs, which straddle the corn rows, but 

 neither plough deeply, stir effectually, nor culti- 

 vate closely, all show their unmistakable marks 

 this year. Wherever they have been there you 

 are pretty sure to find spindling stalks, nubbinly 

 ears, and the field yellow up half way to the tassel. 

 There will be a great many magnificent corn acres 

 this year — a great many more acres where the 

 crop will not yield the product of a ten years* 

 average — while for the whole State over I should 

 doubt whether one-half the whole acreage in corn 

 will come up to an average of five bushels to the 

 acre. Further, there is every reason to think the 

 crop as to soundness will come up to that of 

 1867." 



— The official returns just received at the Bureau 

 of Statistics show that the total value of condensed 

 milk exported from the port of New York in the 

 year 1869, was $79,652, of which $21,870 went to 

 England, $14,900 to Australia, $9,494 to the United 

 States of Columbia, $9,176 to China, $8,116 to 

 Brazil, $3,087 to Cuba, $3,093 to the British West 

 Indies, and $1,767 to the Danish West Indies. 



