12 BULLETIN 1491, IT. S, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
should not be forgotten that the wood crop has been produced without 
the labor of plowing, harrowing, planting, and cultivating that at- 
tends the growing of corn. 
PASTURING THE WOODS 
It is common practice in this central hardwood region to turn live- 
stock into the woods. Probably 75 per cent of the small farm woods 
are heavily pastured. They offer a small quantity of browse for 
cattle, horses, sheep, and goats; and nuts, acorns, various roots and 
bulbs, and grubs for hogs. In addition to food, the woods afford 
shelter from sun, wind, and storm. 
Nearly all hardwoods are subject to browsing by stock. Elm, ash, 
maple, basswood, and yellow poplar appear especially palatable; 
hickory, the oaks, cottonwood, willow, and red gum are less relished. 
Stock can be starved into eating almost any kind of hardwood repro- 
duction. The damage is worse in the spring of the year when the 
growth is tender and grass has barety started, and during hot, dry 
summer spells when the grass is dried up. Hogs are partial to beech- 
nuts and to the acorns of the white oaks, but in the absence of these, 
devour the acorns of red oaks. Where hogs run in the woods the 
chances for white oak and beech seedling reproduction are consid- 
erably lessened. 
When the livestock are numerous and are concentrated in woods of 
a relatively small area, as in most of the small farm wood lots, the 
result is always the same. The young growth is eaten, broken, 
stripped of bark, bent, or tramped out, and new growth does not take 
its place. Grasses work into the woods from the edges and in the 
small openings. The older trees gradually die in the tops and are 
then usually cut out by their owners. The result is a gradual trans- 
formation from a rather dense woods to a wooded pasture in which 
the trees continue to die off and decrease in number from year to 
year. This means the gradual elimination of the farm woods. 
The custom of pasturing the woods is pretty well fixed. It is the 
biggest obstacle to the natural regeneration of timber in the small 
isolated farm woods of the region. In those parts of the central 
hardwood region where the timber covers extensive areas, fences are 
commonly lacking and livestock is not so numerous, runs at large, 
and does little damage except where it concentrates near the villages, 
along roads, or along streams. Indirectly, however, it is responsible 
for many of the forest fires which regularly sweep over these lands, 
some owners of livestock setting fires because they believe burning 
improves the range. 
Judging from the estimates of farmers and others in the region, 
the forage value per acre of the farm woods varies from 25 cents to 
$1.25 a year. This is largely predicated upon the number of acres 
which it takes to support a cow and varies, of course, with the 
density of the woods. It has been estimated by Ovid A. Alderman, 
assistant forester of Ohio, that 2 acres of common farm pasture and 1 
acre of woods Avill support a cow and a suckling calf during a five- 
month grazing season and that the cow if only fairly fat to begin 
with will gain 80 pounds and the calf 75 pounds. Figuring this 
increase at a value of $10 per hundred pounds gives a total of $15.50. 
