FARMING IN THE BLUEGRASS REGION. 7 
Satisfactory historical figures on beef cattle and saddle horses can 
not be gleaned from census records, since cattle have been classified 
differently in the various census years. Beef cattle, though still 
numerous, are less important than formerly. About 1890 there was 
a dropping off not only in the number of beef cattle, but also in the 
number of all cattle. The saddle and driving horses of the bluegrass 
region have long been noted, but economic changes have occurred to 
make them less profitable. Mules, however, have largely filled up the 
ranks, so that to-day there are about the same number of animals of 
the horse kind as formerly. It is interesting to notice the gradual 
decline in the number of working oxen. Horses and mules have 
almost entirely taken the place of cattle as work stock. 
ROTATION OF CROPS. 
No well-defined system of crop rotation prevails in the bluegrass 
region. The common custom, however, is to plant corn or tobacco 
on sod land. Much of the best tobacco land is obtained by breaking 
up old bluegrass sod or new land. ‘Two crops of tobacco are very 
seldom grown in succession on the same land, while two successive 
crops of corn are grown on from one-fourth to one-half of the corn 
area, the rest of the corn and tobacco being followed by a small-grain 
crop, usually wheat. Generally clover and timothy and occasionally 
bluegrass are sown with cereal crops. Hay is then cut usually 1 or 
2 years. 
The great irregularities in rotation are caused by the length of 
time the land remains seeded down. Occasionally a field will be 
sown to clover and turned again at the end of the year. If timothy 
or other grass seeds be sown the land may remain in grass several 
years, and if a good bluegrass sod develops it may remain in pasture 
30 to 40 years. The more common practice, however, is to leave rota- 
tion crop land seeded down from 2 to 5 years. 
The type of farming practiced seems to influence the crop rotation 
to some extent.- On the tobacco farms corn follows corn least fre- 
quently, and the land seldom remains in grass more than 3 years. 
As the farms increase in size through the various types to the large 
stock farms with no tobacco, two crops of corn in succession will be 
raised on about 50 per cent of the corn land, and the time the land 
remains seeded down lengthens to from 3 to 6 years and frequently 
longer. The rotation period for the stock farms, therefore, gener- 
ally ranges from 5 years to 9 or more years. 
SOIL. 
The soil of the bluegrass country is derived from limestone which 
is comparatively rich in lime phosphate. The typical bluegrass soil 
is reddish-brown or chocolate color. According to the United States 
