The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1883-01-12
Stock Raising on Small Farms.

The owners of small farms, or farm.
ers engaged in a system of mixed hus-
bandry, says an exchange. often over
estimate the advantages for stock rails
inc possessed by those with large farms
and who make this a specially. The
latter do possess imp 7rtant advantages.
but there are some compensations to the
stockman on small scale.
The man with thousand acres. a
herd of hundreds, etc, can have men
employed who will give their whole at
tention to one branch of the work, and
learn to do this better than the average
laborer. The large farmer has advan-
tageS in selling. He can make up one
TO dozen carloads of stock ready for
the market; can sort them to make
them sell to the best advantage; can
have buyers come to his place, or can
ship as he chooses. But the small farm
er-he with one hundred acres, for in
stance-has also his advantages. He
can rear and feed a few colts, steers,
pigs or lambs with almost no OUTLAY for
extra labor and very little percepti5le
cost in food. He needs horses for his
farm work. Often brood mares serve
his purpose equally well, and the one.
two or three colts born each year cost
comparatively little to rear. Cows for a
home supply of milk and butter, of
course. will be kept, and often there is
an abundance OF grass in the pasture
for lew young things" and in the
winter the stalk fields, the straw stacks,
the soft corn. etc, can be eaten by
these, when il might otherwise be main
" wasted. When feed fails the large
stock grower must have men whose
main business is to feed and care for
the stock. The small farmer can add
the little additional work as a part of
the necessary chores and scarcely
notice the extra time or labor. Of two
farmers of the class We are speaking of.
the one with little extra stock" will
usually do as much and as good work
during the summer in the fields as his
neighbor who "only keeps a COW or
two, and enough hogs Tor his own
meat"
The small farmer has another ad-
vantage. 1t seems to be the law of
animal lie that the fewer of any sort of
animals that are kept within a given
area, the more healthy they are. We
once asked large and very successful
swine breeder this question: What is
the greatest number of hogs that can be
kept together with the highest percent
age of profit on each?" To this he
promptly answered: lone. The profit
on each decreases in proportion as you
increase Che number" His idea was
that the health and thrift of the herd
decreased in proportion as the numbers
were augmented The greater economy
of feeding and management which the
large farmer or feeder may practice may
possibly more than compensate for this
loss of health and thrift. but the illustra-
ton serves to show that the advantages
are not all on one side.
1t is not necessary to money making
and deserves success in fine breeding
thatthere should be large herd of stock.
The late MIR. Sharpless, whose Jerseys
had a reputation all over the country,
is sa to have rarely kept more than a
half-dozen cows; and on the Channel
Islands nearly all the herds are quite
small. In horse breeding, there is no
reason why the man with three or four
mares may not take high rank as
breeder Coladn's Rural World