286 ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON STOCK EEEDS AND FEEDING 



Cropping Systems for New England Dairy Farms. — ^According 

 to Dodge in Farmers' Bui. 337. 



"New England is preeminently a section of small farms, due 

 largely ■ to the generally broken character of the country, the 

 farming land being located in small areas scattered among the 

 hills. Since the farms are small, some type of intensive farm- 

 ing must be followed to make them profitable. Since the land 

 has already been tilled longer than good land will bear an ex- 

 ploitive system of farming, some type of live-stock farming is 

 a necessity on most farms. As the most intensive form of stock 

 farming is dairying, this latter industry is naturally the leading 

 one on New England farms. Dairying, in the main, has been a 

 profitable business in New England, but in recent years condi- 

 tions have changed, and the outlook is not so satisfactory as it 

 has been at various times in the past. 



"Some of the difificulties which are at present most evident 

 are the high prices of, concentrated feeds and of labor. Some 

 sections of New England, furthermore, feel the pressure of 

 unsatisfactory market conditions, especially those sections which 

 ship milk to the large cities, where the farmers are offered a 

 price for their milk on which they can hardly make a profit. 



"Outside of the milk-shipping sections the difificulties men- 

 tioned do not appear, on careful observation, to be the most 

 fundamental, although they are the most obvious. Taking the 

 Northeastern States of the Union as a whole, owing to climate 

 and topography the land is in general adapted to the growth of 

 grass and trees. The fact that grass is so much at home in those 

 States has led to a serious fault in New England dairy farming, 

 namely, the mismanagement of grass lands. This consists in 

 the main of a lack of proper treatment for permanent grass lands 

 and of suitable rotations for other land, as well as the use for 

 grass growing of land which does not give profitable returns 

 from grass and which should rightfully be devoted to tree 

 growth, either as woodland or orchards. Another frequent and 

 wide-spread fault is the habit of cutting the hay crop entirely 

 too late in the season, which of itself shortens the life of the 

 meadow and results in an inferior quality of hay for dairy feed- 

 ing. 



