The Iuka vidette. (Iuka, Miss.) 1894-1912, 1909-11-18
HOW MUCH STOCK CAN BE KEPT ON
THE FARM.
BY w. B. Mercier.

This is an important question that
we are often confronted with, and it is
one involving good deal of thought
among our best farmers today through
out the country.
There are so many things 10 be taken
into consideration in giving direct adj
vice on the subject, and it is quite diff
cult to write about it except in gem
eral way. Specific answers can be Civ
EN- only when quite number of de-
tails and local surroundings are known.
1t is safe to say that very few farms
carry more stock than they should
many not half enough. About half the
area of the United States is what is
known as improved lands. Two-thirds
of this is devoted to cultivated crops.
including meadows; the other third and
considerable part of the uninproved
lands are devoted to pastures for stock
of various kinds. No country has ever
been eminently prosperous without rails
ing great deal of stock. 1t is abso-
lutely essential where the soil is kept
in high state of fertility.
There are thousands of acres all over
the country that should never have been
put into any crop except grass. The
rough, rolling nature of the soil makes
it impossible to hold it in any other
way. 1t is often very fertile land, and
would stay SO, and perhaps improve, if
only grass and stock were kept on it.
Tbia 70 Of al f,;r. Z.
of the South. Our long, open winters,
sandy loan soils, and torrential rainfalls
would make a very hard problem to hold
hill soils, even when cultivated with
highly intelligent labor But with the
careless Indifferent element that we
must depend upon for our field labor, it
is no less than a crime against the state
and future posterity to continue in the
same line as heretofore
Much more land can be made to yield
revenue by using it for stock to its
full capacity. Grass is the food of ma
ture for animals, and only the smallest
amount of labor need be expended to
produce it. The animal will gather it,
market it and fertilize your soil, and
giIEe you as much net profit as anything
you could grow with many times the
amount of labor expended.
The kind and quality of stock to be
grown must be governed by the size of
the farm, nature of lands, disposition
of owner, water supply and numerous
other details. A man suited to one kind
OF stock would be failure at raising
another.
Dairy raising is undoubtedly the
most profitable of all farming where it
can be located conveniently to market,
and is superintendent by an intelligent
and industrious man with willing and
reliable assistants. Hogs can be grown
more proftably in connection with the
dairy than in any other way Good
pastures, dairy by-products, and min
imum amount of concentrated foods will
produce pork from a twentieth century
hog at figure that would astonish the
most successful breeders of the past
century. !.
Every farmer should raise all his work
stock, at least. Some of the most sue
cessful men in small way, on the farms
familiar to our boyhood days, grew all
the horses and mules used on their own
farms. Many of them had one or more
for sale each spring, and they usually
brought full value, and premium above
any imported stock. Good cattle can
be grown in the South with enough care,
though not SO well adopted to this class
of stock as to others.
On every farm there is cheap feed
stuff which will not pay freight and
yield a profit, but when we convert ten
pounds of this dry feed into pound of
good meat, or thirty-five pounds into
pound of butter, we can pay freight on
this and still have handsome profit
Besides the profit we get on the fin
ished product we get at least rs per cent.
of the fertility taken out of the soil
after it passes through the animal. This
is almost case of "eating your cake,
and having it too"
From all farm experiences of the past
and with the serious question of labor
supply staring us in the face, we do
not think there is any way of getting
around the increase of live stock on
every farm in the South No farmer
should fail to keep enough stock to
utilize idle lands by pasture, waste pro-
ducts and cheap heavy feeds in getting
them on the market in a concentrated
and more valuable form.
We hope each man will study out this
problem for himself, apply common
sense to his case, make up to the situ-
alton and get abreast of the times be-
fore Others, seeing the opportunities,
come in and steal his birthright. DR..
Holmes said that the world was divided
into two classes: Gone who does things,
the other who sits still and asks why it
was not done another way" To which
class do you belongs
Shall We Burn Cotton Stalks?
The widespread agitation in favor Of
burning cotton stalks on land infested