COST AND UTILIZATION OF POWER ON FARMS. 43 
been charged to the workstock at the 1921 prices shown above, the 
cost per farm would have been about $400, a reduction of about 55 
per cent below the 1920 cost. Assuming no change in other costs 
and credits, the 1921 cost per farm of maintaining the workstock 
would be about $575, or $85 per head. 
Chores. — The total time spent in feeding and caring for the work- 
stock amounted to 430 hours per farm for the year, or about 63 hours 
per head. The figures given in Table 28 represent the value of this 
time at 25 cents per hour. This rate is approximately the average 
value per hour of all farm labor in this section during the year of the 
survey. It must be remembered that all this work was done either 
by the farmer himself or by the regular labor without any actual cash 
outlay for it, and that a considerable part of the time thus used 
would not have been profitably employed otherwise. 
Depreciation. — The total value of all workstock on the farm at the 
time of the investigation, the value of the workstock on the farm at 
the beginning of the year covered by the investigation, the cost of 
any which had been bought during the year, and the amount received 
for any which had been sold were obtained from each farmer. Colts 
which were foaled during the year of the investigation were credited 
to the workstock at their value (minus the breeding fee) at the time 
of the survey. All these figures were combined to obtain the total 
appreciation or depreciation of the workstock on the farm. 
On all the 286 farms a total of only 111 colts had been foaled 
during the year. (See Table 6.) The average value of these colts 
at the time of the survey was not far from $50 and the breeding fee 
in most cases had been $15. Thus, for all farms, the credit for colts 
amounted to about $2 per head of workstock. 
On this basis the workstock had depreciated on 154 of the farms 
during the year of the investigation by an average of $136 per farm. 
They had appreciated on 64 farms by an average of $92 per farm, and 
there had been no change of value on the remaining 68 farms, thus 
making a net depreciation of about $53 per farm, or $7.79 per head. 
This depreciation amounted to a little over 5 per cent of the value 
of the workstock. If the credit for colts had not been included the 
depreciation would have amounted to nearly 7 per cent of the value 
of the workstock. 
Only a part of the feed consumed by the workstock is salable, and 
a large part of the costs other than feed do not represent any outlay 
of cash on the part of the farmer. Likewise the manure produced, 
for which a credit of $15 per head has been allowed, had no sale value 
on a large majority of these farms. 
The corn, oats, and hay consumed by the workstock was practically 
all salable, and in most cases the straw which was included as part of 
the ration could have been sold. Stover, however, could rarely have 
