46 iLLisrois dairymen's association. 



ing cattle, for huge pigs, for monster sheep, for fine houses and for great 

 barns, but the universal mania is for additional drainage. Let us hope it 

 may continue until rainfall and the absence of rain shall cease to rob the 

 tiller of the soil of the reward due him for his earnest labor. It may be of 

 interest to know that Macon, McLain, Edgar and Kendall are the banner 

 counties of the state in drainage, rating them in the order named. 



If we may trust our own calculations to Assessor's returns, there 

 was in 1883 about 23 per cent of the total acreage of farm lands in central 

 Illinois planted to corn, producing about 28 per cent of the entire value of 

 all the farm products of this district. The following table of the per cent of 

 the values of the six leading products each, to total value of products of the 

 farm, I have culled from the same returns, showing the appreciation our 

 farmers have of these products : 



Corn 28 percent. 



Hogs... 14 " '' 



Oats 10 " *' 



Cattle , 9 " " 



Pastures 7 " " 



Hay 12 " " 



Or in other words 80 per cent, of our productions are meat, and meat 

 producers, while for this same district the dairy product will not exceed 1 

 per cent that of the entire State being a little more than five per cent. 

 While corn is king, hogs are the next in importance, and are a neces- 

 sary adjunct on every farm, requiring but little capital to grow them, each 

 carrying to market many pounds made from oddsand ends on the farm, that 

 without his pigship must be lost. 



The State of Illinois has forty million dollars worth of cattle, consisting 

 of nearly a million cows and one million four hundred thousand other cattle. 

 I have not taken the trouble to compute the number that have their owner- 

 ship in central Illinois, nor is it important. One thing is certain, the cattle 

 interest is increasing with the farmers themselves. Calves that formerly 

 went to the butcher, the feeder, or the professional stockman, now are re- 

 tained on the farm, as a part of its necessary equipments. While our Elgin 

 brothers have a high appreciation of a cow that is a deep milker, or a great 

 butter maker, our farmers esteem more, the massive, well developed form, 

 that will yield the greatest amount of d elicious steak, or roast, the cow that 

 gives assurance that her posterity shall be large beefy animals. Many are 

 the invectives hurled at the little Jersey by our one idead cattle feeders, who 

 see no beauty in her fawn like form, and her wonderful propensity to turn all 

 she eats into golden butter. While the tendency is to beef, yet the milking 

 qualities of our cattle are not entirely neglected, for there is a constant in- 

 quiry for breeding stock of milking strains. Hundreds of Jerseys, Holsteins, 

 Natives, grade and full blood Short Horns are doing nobly at the milk pail. 



In enumerating the leading products of Central Illinois, I must briefly 

 add, that the oat crop is steadily growing in importance, because of its ad- 

 vantage in rotation, and because farmers are being convinced of its impor- 

 tance as a part of the rations of their farm stock,especially the young things 

 about the farm; that our meadows and pastures, are excelled by none, and 



