amount of use was usually limited. As might be expected, farmers having 

 tractors used their horses and mules somewhat less than did nontractor 

 farmers. Nearly three -fourths of the operators of tractor farms using 

 horses and mules used their workstock less than 10 days in 1956, compared 

 with about two-thirds of the nontractor farms (table 2). Most of the tractor 

 owners used their horses and mules only for intermittent operations, and 

 more than 45 percent of them used their workstock for only 4 days or less 

 in 1956. Over one-fourth used their workstock from 5 to 9 days in that year. 



Naturally, there is more use of workstock on nontractor than on trac- 

 tor farms, but about one -third of the operators of the former worked their 

 stock less than 5 days in 1956. Another third used their workstock from 5 

 to 9 days that year and about one-fourth from 10 to 19 days (table 2). Most 

 of the nontractor farms contain less than 100 acres and many of them are 

 part-time operations with the operator having a full-time job off the farm. 

 Many of the operators keep horses for limited use, and quite a few have 

 riding horses. 



The decline in use of workstock started with the larger machines that 

 required several animals for power. Horses and mules are now used chiefly 

 with light draft implements, usually for intermittent operations, and on the 

 smaller farms. Horse-drawn machines are used mainly on nontractor farms, 

 but they are used to some extent also on farms that have tractors. The 

 horse-drawn corn-cotton planter, moldboard plow, disk plow, row -crop 

 cultivator, and mower are the machines most commonly drawn by horses. 

 Each was used on more than 5 percent of the acreage covered in these oper- 

 ations on farms in the 1956 survey (table 3). 



Crop planting is one of the more important operations for which work- 

 stock is still used. Crops were planted by horse-drawn implements on about 

 12 percent of the acreage planted by corn and cotton planters (table 3), 

 However, acreage planted per horse-drawn machine was low; it averaged 16 

 acres per machine annually. 



Workstock is also used widely for plowing. On farms on which mold- 

 board plows were used in 1956, more than 9 percent of the acreage plowed in 

 this way was turned over by horse-drawn plows (table 3). The use of these 

 plows averaged 22 acres per machine, somewhat more than horse-drawn 

 planters. With respect to other types of plows, only 6 percent of the total 

 disk plowing was done with horse-drawn implements. Their average use in 

 19 56 was 28 acres. Ordinarily, disk plows are used where soil conditions 

 are such that moldboard plows will not operate efficiently. Usually, this is 

 in soil so dry and hard that moldboard plows cannot penetrate. Disk plows 

 are used to a considerable extent on stony, stumpy land and on very loose 

 ground. 



