Where Are Horses and Mules Used as Workstock? 



Numbers of horses and mules have declined in all regions of the 

 United States. They are most numerous now in the South Atlantic and East 

 South Central areas. In these areas, labor is relatively cheap, and work- 

 stock can be used to advantage on small acreages of such crops as cotton 

 and tobacco. Usually, a farmer with a small acreage allotment of cotton or 

 tobacco cannot afford to own a tractor plus the implements to be used with it, 

 unless he can also do custom work for others. Here as elsewhere, however, 

 small farms are being merged with other units to form larger operations so 

 that machinery and other resources can be used more economically. This 

 process has been speeded up during the last two decades by the opportunities 

 for nonfarm employment both in the South and elsewhere. Indications are 

 that elimination of horses and mules will continue as the process of farm 

 consolidation and mechanization continues. 



How Are Horses and Mules Used ? 



Despite the drastic decline in the total number of horses and mules, 

 a significant percentage of farms still have one or more. The 1954 census 

 reported that 38 percent of U. S. farms had horses or mules, and that 17 

 percent had horses or mules but no tractor. The number of these animals 

 used as workstock is not shown. It seems safe to assume that many were not 

 so used, particularly on farms with tractors. 



Information is now available from a random survey of farms to show 

 the extent to which horses and mules are used as workstock on farms. This 

 source indicates that about one -third of our farms had horses or mules that 

 were used for at least one day of farmwork in 1956. This represented about 

 85 percent of the horses and mules on farms. The remaining 15 percent 

 were not used at all or were used only for riding purposes. 



Most of the farms that used workstock, about 75 percent of the total, 

 had no tractors and depended entirely on horses and mules or custom work 

 for power in field operations. As the census treats cropper units as farms, 

 these figures probably overstate somewhat the situation for all farms as 

 reported by the Census of Agriculture. Our survey did not do this, but it 

 did include the horses and mules used by croppers and owned by plantation 

 operators. 



Among the farms using horses or mules in 1956, about two-thirds 

 used the workstock less than 10 days. The other third used workstock for 

 10 days or more, but only a small proportion fell in the 20 -day and over 

 group (table 2). That is, even on the farms that used horses and mules, the 



