80 ILLINOIS dairymen's ASSOCIATIOK. 



given to the subject than it deserves, nor more accorded it as an improvement 

 than can be sustained by the practical experience of members of this Associ- 

 ation. "We are fast approaching the era of what is termed " high farming " 

 and the drainage of our wet lands whether they be used for pasture, meadow, 

 or cultivated crops, is the first step that must be taken in this direction. 



DAIRYING IN CENTRAL ILLINOIS-ITS ADVANTAGES, DISAD- 

 VANTAGES, AND MODES OF PROCEDURE. 



BY RALPH ALLEK, DELAY AN, ILL. 



Dairying in Central Illinois has not thus far formed a principal feature 

 in our agriculture. The few dairies that flourish have not heretofore been 

 sufficiently numerous, or of so great importance as to amount to a unit in our 

 agriculture. Our live-stock consists mainly of horses, hogs, sheep and beef 

 cattle, and our principal farm crops have been corn, oats and wheat ; these 

 crops of grain being the chief source of revenue to the greatest number of 

 our farmers. Upon those farms where cattle and hogs have been pastured 

 and fatted the land has usually retained its natural fertility and ability to 

 produce large crops of grain. Upon farms where grain has been continuously 

 raised and sold, the soil has generally become incapable of producing profit- 

 able yields of grain. While Central Illinois always has been, and probably 

 will continue to be a great corn, oat, and wheat country; yet to continue to 

 produce these great grain crops at the enormous yields per acre of which our 

 prairie soil is capable, and at the degree of profitableness with which intelli- 

 gent farmers ought to conduct their business, and which in the past has been 

 a characteristic of Central Illinois farming, our lands should be in the 

 highest state of fertility ; to accomplish which they should be subjected 

 to a continuous process of restoration to their natural fertility. The 

 first crops raised after the original praiHe sod was well rotted, were as a rule 

 of the largest yield and the most profitable the land has ever produced. At 

 the present time our largest and most profitable yields of wheat or corn are 

 the first, second or third crops succeeding an old pasture or meadow. Such 

 crops indicate a method of enriching the soil so as to produce crops equal to 

 the natural capacity of it, that is, to have each year a piece of grass-land to 

 plow up, upon which to raise several crops of grain and then re-seed to grass; 

 or in other words to pursue a system of rotation of crops of which grass forms 

 a principal part. This suggests the subject of the most profitable disposition 

 of the grass crops. To derive the greatest benefit from the grass as a fertil- 

 izer it should be fed upon the farm in such ways that all the manure will be 

 economically applied to the cultivated crops. As a matter of business, it is 

 not only desirable to derive this indirect profit on the hay and pasture 

 through the succeeding crops of grain, but if possible to make a paying in- 

 vestment on the animals to which the hay is fed and with which the pastures 

 are stocked. 



It is a noticeable feature in Central Illinois that few small farms produce 

 beef, the eighty acre farms almost never have a two-year-old steer upon them. 

 Grazing steers are almost as rare on the one-hundred-and-sixty acre farms, 



