COST AND UTILIZATION OF POWER ON FAEMS. 



25 



for grinding the year's supply of feed. Usually the wood was sawed 

 at one or two different times, while for grinding feed the tractor was 

 run for only a few hours per week in the winter months. 



The tractors were often not powerful enough for the heavier work 

 of filling silos, thrashing, shredding, and shelling corn, and this 

 accounts in part for the small number of men who used their tractors 

 for these operations. However, there were no silos on many of 

 the farms; shredding was not common in any except the Ohio 

 areas and in the Madison County, Indiana, area; the practice of 

 shelling corn on the farm was common only in the Illinois areas; 

 and on a majority of the farms thrashing was still done with custom 

 outfits. 



CUSTOM WORK. 



One hundred and eighty-three farmers did some custom work 

 with their tractors during the year. This work amounted to an 

 average of 4.6 days for all tractors (see Table 10), or 7.2 days for 

 the 183 which were used for custom work. The number of men 

 who used their tractors for different kinds of custom work and the 

 average number of days spent by them at each operation are given 

 in Table 20. In all, 116 tractors were used for custom drawbar 

 work, and 113 for custom belt work. 



Table 20. — Custom work. 



Operation. 



Drawbar: 



Plowing 



Disking 



Other work . . 

 Belt: 



Filling silos . . 



Thrashing . . . 



Sawing wood 



Shredding . . . 



Other work . . 



Days 

 used. 



5.0 

 2.0 

 3.1 



3.3 

 8.5 

 1.9 

 7.2 

 3.6 



More than half of the drawbar custom work done by the tractors 

 was plowing. The " other " drawbar work shown in the table included 

 dragging roads, cutting grain, and other kinds of field work, but less 

 than 10 per cent of the owners did any one kind of this work for hire. 

 Comparatively few men did any one belt operation for hire, but 

 from the standpoint of the time spent at the different operations by 

 the men who actually performed them for hire, thrashing and shred- 

 ding were more important than plowing. 



TRACTORS WHICH WERE USED FOR NEITHER BELT NOR CUSTOM WORK. 



While drawbar work on the home farm amounted on the average to 

 only 76 per cent of the total work done by the tractors, 55 of the 286 

 56390°— 21— Bull. 997 4 



