20 



BULLETIN 997, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



the land, following with the disk drill drawn by horses. In Illinois 

 and to a less extent in Indiana the land planted in oats was prepared 

 with the tractor. The cornstalks from the preceding year were broken 

 with the disk and the seed bed put in shape for planting the crop. 



On some farms the tractors had not been used to any great 

 extent for disking freshly plowed ground in the spring, because of 

 danger of packing the soil. On many of the larger farms, where it 

 was necessary to supplement the tractor with horses in preparing 

 the seed bed, horses were used for disking while the tractor was being 

 used for plowing. 



The fact that a smaller portion of the disking than of the plowing 

 was done with horses was in the main due to these two conditions. 



Of the 286 operators, 284 did some disking during the year. In 

 Table 17 is given the number of men on the various sized farms 

 who did all their disking with their tractors, those who used both 

 tractors and horses, and those who used horses only. The disking 

 has not been separated into spring and fall work, or into work on 

 plowed and unplowed ground. 



Table 17. — Kind of power used for disking on farms of different sizes. 



Size of farms (crop acres): 



Number 



of 

 farmers. 



Farmers 

 using 



tractors 

 only. 



Farmers 



using 

 tractors 



and 

 horses. 



Farmers 

 using 

 horses 

 only. 





7 



28 

 70 

 56 

 46 

 36 

 19 

 22 



4 

 24 

 39 

 33 

 24 

 18 

 10 



8 



1 

 3 

 28 

 18 

 20 

 17 

 9 

 13 



2 



80 to 1 19 



I 



120 to 159 



3 



160 to 199 



5 



200 to 239 



2 



240 to 279.". 



1 



280 to 319 







1 







T otal 



284 

 100 



160 

 57 



109 



38 



15 





5 







Sixty-four per cent of the men with less than 160 crop acres, 56 

 per cent of those with 160 to 239 crop acres, and 47 per cent of those 

 with 240 or more crop acres did all their disking with tractors. The 

 fact that more than half of these men did all the disking with their 

 tractors and 95 per cent used them for part of the work indicates 

 a well established place for the tractor in this work as well as in 

 plowing. 



Harrowing, rolling, planking, and packing. — In most cases not 

 more than two of these operations were performed on a farm during 

 the year. Six operators had not used spike-tooth or spring-tooth 

 harrows, rollers, plankers, or packers during the year, but had fitted 

 their ground entirely with disks. 



When tractors furnished the power, the implements were gener- 

 ally used in combination rather than individually, the most common 



