4:60 
Annual Report of the 
INJURY FROM FARM STOCK. 
The sixth named cause is one that never should find a place on 
any fruit growers list. But alas it is one of the most fruitful sour¬ 
ces of the destruction of our orchards. 
I will not count the accidental injuries from an occasional unruly 
animal, but the results of deliberate commonizing of the orchard 
to the hog or cattle pasture. “It is so handy. 11 ‘'Can’t let so nice a 
bit of feed go to waste.” “I guess they will stand it,” &c. Such 
replies I often get when remonstrating with a farmer for pastur¬ 
ing his orchard. In October last I visited an old orchard that had 
been famous for its fine fruit, and in visiting which I anticipated 
much pleasure. Driving into the yard, I said as usual, “good day, 
sir; how’s your orchard?” 
My greeting was kindly returned, but the answer to my query, 
“our orchard ain’t much good any more,” was itself a confession of 
its treatment. I found the orchard had been a hog-pasture for three 
years past. It originally contained fifty trees; had been refilled 
twice and increased to nearly one hundred. Of the original first 
planting there remained seven; one St. Lawrence, two Rambo, two 
Tallman Sweet, one Spitzenburg, and one Greening, only two of 
the seven will probably survive another summer. Of these, three 
were girdled and peeled by the swine enough to kill them last fall, 
and yet these seven with several more leafless stubs and trunks 
were four years ago worth fifty dollars each by any fair estimate of 
values. When I rebuked the owner for this waste, he did not seem 
to think himself at fault. I soon convinced him that his liog-crop 
was made at tenfold market rates. 
EFFECT OF PASTURING. 
The effect of herding swine in this orchard and many others I 
have seen, is more than the peeling and barking of the trees. I 
have already pointed to the injury done to orchards by compacting 
the soil to the exclusion of the rain-falls of autumn, and I have 
come to believe that most of the orchard trees we call winter-killed , 
are so from this cause, primarily; especially now after this thor¬ 
ough sifting of our lists and purging out all tender varieties. 
When we count this direct injury from gnawing, rubbing, starv¬ 
ing and transferring of farm-stock, we conclude it will not pay to 
pasture the orchard. 
