University of California Davis - El Rodeo Yearbook (Davis, CA)

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tilizers is therefore bad from the standpoint of both national and agricul- tural economics. Next we come to livestock,s function in eliminating waste of labor and capital. One way in which it does this is to stabilize the amount of labor needed on the farm throughout the year. Some forms of animal husbandry, such as sheep raising, require few laborers per unit of land, while others require a great number, but whether the amount of labor needed be large or small, it is, with few exceptions, stable. As many men are needed during the Winter as during the Summer. The wheat grower of South Dakota sows his grain in April and May, harvests and threshes it in July and August, and is without work for his men and equipment from September to March. The contrast between these two forms of agriculture shows one way in which livestock can save labor and capital. By acting as machines for transforming coarse, bulky raw materials into concentrated and valuable finished products, animals avoid waste of labor in another way. It takes ten pounds of dry feed to make one pound of beef, and thirty pounds of dry feed to make one pound of butter. Besides being much easier to handle and ship, these concentrated products bring the farmer who manages his place intelligently a much greater profit than he could have obtained had he sold them in the raw state, and, as noted above, their production keeps the fertility in the soil. These facts doubtless explain why it is that in most farming sections the most prosperous farmers are those who pay most attention to livestock. If the farmer feeds his crops to his animals in the field, he will not only turn his raw materials into finished products, but will also save the labor of harvesting and threshing. Poor rye, wheat, oats and barley can be successfully tthogged down? Corn may be harvested by hogs and sheep, and its feeding value may be increased if soy beans are planted with it, and rape sown in at the last cultivation. Mature soy beans them- selves are hard to thresh, but soy bean hay, mixed with some corn, makes an ideal Winter feed for hogs, since the beans supply the proteins and take the place of tankage. The following is a concrete example of the profit and saving of labor resulting from this method. An Oklahoma farmer bought 130 shoats during the Winter, paying $1,460 for them. During the Winter they ate $666 worth of corn. In the Spring they were turned into a thirty- acre alfalfa field, sharing it with some horses and cattle. They were charged with two-thirds of the rent of the field at the rate of $10 an acre, or $300 for the season. When corn had ripened sufficiently they were turned into a thirty-acre corn field, whose estimated yield was 1200 bushels, at a price of 75 cents a bushel. After consuming the corn in ninety days, and charging themselves with $900, the hogs were ready for market, and since it was early in the season, brought a price of 15 cents a pound. Upon adding up the items of expense, the total cost of the 130 hogs was found to be $3,260, not counting labor or fertility. How- ever, the labor saved by not harvesting the corn was greater than the labor used in caring for the hogs. At 15 cents a pound the hogs sold for $5,300, netting the owner a profit of $2.040. Finally, livestock eliminates waste of land by utilizing areas which, 131;

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by-products, grain straw, corn stover and cottonseed meal, will serve to show the many uses to Which such products may be put in 11vestock production. Practical experience as well as experimental work has shown that grain straw and corn stover, combined With concentrates, can be eco- nomically fed to animals. These roughages are used in the fattening rations of practically all farm animals except hogs, and can be used in the winter rations of cattle, horses and sheep. Breeding herds of beef cattle and dry dairy cows can be kept on a ration containing a large amount of roughage, and it can be used, with the addition of some grain, in the rations of flocks of breeding ewes and horses doing light work or no work at all. While not adapted to producing the largest flow of milk, roughage has a valuable place in the rations of dairy cows. Milking cows may eat as much corn stover as they want, if in addition they get some grain, silage, or leguminous hay. For economical results the stover should be shredded, and a little molasses sprinkled over it Will add to its palatability. Oat, barley and wheat straw are other roughages that can be used in much the same proportion as stover. Besides being used for feed, straws and stover are very useful for bedding. Straw soaks up the liquid manure containing many valuable fertilizing elements, Which would be lost were the liquid allowed to escape. Liquid manure and the straw itself are important constituents of barnyard manure. There is still much room for extension in the use of these by-prod- ucts, for in spite of their proven value, much goes to waste. Only about two-thirds of the total annual production of grain straw is being used to best advantage, and at least one-half of the remainder is an absolute loss. Stated in figures, about 79 million tons or 67 per cent of the crop is used annually for livestock production, either as feed or bedding, 7 per cent is sold, 10 per, Cent plowediunder, and 15 per cent burned. If the straw is not acutally used by animals, or turned under, its fertilizing value is lost. Burning in particular almost totally destroys its value, and is practiced chiefly because of custom and ignorance of the value of the straw, to altogether too great an extent, particularly in the Western States. Corn stover is more widely used than straw; of the total annual crop, about 83 per cent or 204 million tons, are used in livestock production, while 10 per cent is plowed under, 3 per cent sold and 4 per cent burned. In this case also, burning results in almost total waste, although it offers an easy and quick way of getting the land cleared for plowing. In the case of cottonseed meal, large quantities have been used in recent years for purposes of direct fertilizations; in 1914 six of the Southern States used 1,000,000 tons in this way. This meal is worth from thirty-five to forty dollars a ton for feeding cattle, and When properly fed, the output of fertilizer is much greater than the output obtained from the meal itself, and farmers get in addition the profits from their livestock. Besides being used for direct fertilization, much cottonseed meal, together With molasses, corn and peanut concentrates, is being exported from the United States. In rations containing roughages large amounts of these concen- trates are and should be used, and their exportation or use as direct fer- 152

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were it not for their use by animals, would be partially or Wholly unpro- ductive. Lands along streams, lands partially covered With trees, stumps or slashings, and lands too hilly or stony to cultivate come under this head. Only one-half of the farm area in the United States today is improved, and only two-thirds of this improved land is in farm crops, including meadows. The other third of the improved land, and a con- siderable part of the unimproved, is utilized as pasture. Thus animals overcome waste of fertility by returning the fertilizing elements to the soil in the form of manure. They reduce waste of farm by-products by using them as feeds and bedding. They reduce waste of labor needed on the farm throughout the year, by transforming bulky raw materials into concentrated finished products, and When turned into the field, by helping the farmer harvest his crops in the busy season. They reduce waste of land by making productive areas that would other- Wise lie idle. The combination of these functions makes livestock a very great factor in the elimination of waste on the American farm. 1.5+