30 BULLETIN 907, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



was tedded at least once and raked into windrows before loading. 

 Tedders were used on only a small portion of the farms and no figures 

 for the daily duty of one horse at this work are given. The large 

 acreage covered per day per horse in raking in Madison County, 

 Ohio, is due to the fact that on many of the farms there only one 

 horse was used on the rake although in the other areas 2 horses 

 were nearly always used regardless of the size of the rake. The 

 daily duty of a horse at loading and hauling hay depended almost 

 entirely on whether a loader was used and upon the size of the crew. 

 The figures in Table 22 are simply averages of all farms in each area, 

 regardless of the method of loading employed and the number of men 

 and teams used for the work. 



Cutting and thrashing grain. — The small amounts of horse labor 

 used for cutting grain in Madison County, Ind., and Knox County, 

 111., are due to the fact that tractors did a larger portion of the work 

 in these counties than in the other areas. Tractors were used for 

 cutting over 50 per cent of the grain in both of these areas. Tractors 

 were used for cutting nearly 50 per cent of the grain in Madison 

 County, Ohio, but the acreage of small grain on the farms visited 

 there (see Table 2) , was so great that the amount of horse labor used 

 for this operation was greater than for any other area. 



The horse labor listed under thrashing includes all the labor used 

 on these farms for hauling the bundles from the fields to the thrasher 

 and for hauling the thrashed grain to the elevator or market when 

 done by the regular thrashing crew. A large part of this work was 

 " exchange labor," but in practically every case the' horses owned 

 by the men interviewed did approximately an equal amount of work 

 in thrashing on neighboring farms. While this work required on the 

 average 31 days of horse labor and on most farms the thrashing was 

 all done in one or two days, the use of the horses owned on a particular 

 farm usually extended over a period of one to two weeks. 



Harvesting corn. — The amount of horse labor used for the different 

 corn-harvesting operations reflects the practices in the different 

 areas. The use of horses in cutting corn was confined entirely to the 

 corn binder, and these machines were not in general use in any area 

 except Seneca County, Ohio. The horse labor listed under " Silage" 

 is only that used in hauling corn from the field to the ensilage cutter. 

 On the average, husking from the standing stalk (see fig. 10) required 

 a greater use of horses than any other of the corn harvesting opera- 

 tions, but in Seneca County, Ohio, very little corn was harvested in 

 this way, and in Madison County, Ohio, a considerable part of the 

 crop was ensiled or cut and husked from the shock. The common 

 practice there was to husk the corn by hand from the shock and 

 throw it in piles, the only horse labor used being that required to haul 

 the husked corn from field to the bin or crib. The amount of horse 



