10 
BULLETIN 501, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
the average being $29.03. The price per ton of corn stover ranged 
from $5 to $6. Hay ranged from $4 to $10 per ton, according to 
kind and quality. Silage was valued at about $5 per ton. The 
average price of all dry roughages ranged from $5.17 to $8.13, with 
an average of $6.51. Owing to the prices of feed materials in this 
section the average cost of feeding a cow on this farm is high. 
These records show that a ration having as a basis cottonseed 
meal, even at southern prices, is more expensive than a ration with 
corn as a basis at prices prevailing on northern farms at the time 
of this investigation. The concentrates on this farm constitute 54 
per cent of the total feed cost, which is from 7 to 20 per cent higher, 
-proportionately, than on the three northern farms. 
LABOR. 
In the production of milk the cost of labor on these four farms is 
second in importance to feed. As shown in Table I, the labor is 
approximately one-fourth of the total cost of keeping a dairy cow, 
or about one-half the cost of feed. This labor includes the work of 
men and horses required to feed and care for cows, handle the milk, 
and market the products. Man labor is charged on the basis of 
the complete cost of hired labor on each farm; that is, the rate 
per hour is obtained by adding to the cash wages the value of board 
and other perquisites and dividing this total by the total number 
of hours of all hired labor. Horse labor is charged on the basis of 
cost, and the rate per hour is obtained by dividing the total cost of 
keeping the horses on the farm by the number of hours of horse work. 
Table VII. — Number of hours of man and horse labor required per cow per year to pro- 
duce milk and deliver it at the railroad station on each of the four farms. 
Year. 
Wisconsin farm. 
Michigan farm. 
Pennsylvania 
farm. 
North Carolina 
farm. 
Man 
labor. 
Horse 
labor. 
Man 
labor. 
Horse 
labor. 
Man 
labor. 
Horse 
labor. 
Man 
labor. 
Horse 
labor. 
1909 
Hours. 
213 
214 
205 
224 
Hours. 
41 
38 
28 
24 
Hours. 
195 
260 
236 
Hours. 
28 
32 
35 
Hours. 
Hours. 
Hours. 
Hours. 
1910 
1911 
268 
277 
242 
1507 
74 
1912. . 
189 
151 
20 
22 
46 
1913 
46 
1914.'. 
U30 
Average 
214 
33 
230 
32 
170 
21 
262 
55 
1 1914 not included in average. 
Table VII gives the hours of labor required per cow for each of 
the four farms. The highest labor requirement is on the North 
Carolina farm. This is due, in part, to the fact that the herd is the 
smallest and the distance to market greatest. The extra labor of 
bottling and retailing the milk in 1914 accounts for the greater labor 
requirement of the last year. Owing to this extra labor for retail 
marketing figures for this year are omitted in the farm average. 
