The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-06-15
COMMENTS ON DA|RY|NC

UUIninknl III Utz UHIlllluU
I received from a young farmer in
the tobacco section Of North Carolina
some years ago a letter that was out OF
of the ordinary. He concluded that
as his neighbOrS were all rape
up in tobacco it would pay him to
raise COWS to sell to them, and he
wrote to me asking what breed would
be best for him to raise. But. he
said, I must remember that they let
their COW stand out around straw
stacks and under the lea of the build
ings all winter.
/ wrote to him that the only breed
that he needed was the olnmon scrub
for no improved breed OF dairy COWS
would be any better than the scrub
with such treatment-in fact, cot 50
good.
The trouble With our people is just
what was expressed by the cotton
farmer at Laurinburg some years ago,
which | have mentioned before. What
YOU say about keeping stock is all
right, | but | do not want to
be pestered With them The man who
does not want to be pestered with COWS
will never succeed in dairNing, for
there is no sort Of farming that de-
mandS closer attention every day in
the week, and if a man is not pre-
pared to give the COWS the best atten-
ton, he had better let dairying alone
visited a farmer in Eastern North
Carolina one winter. He had q fine
farm and a beautiful house, and told
me that he had 125 cattle in the cane
brakes that he did not expect to see
till spring, and he had no milk for his
coffee and not a cow on the place. I
suppose he did not want to be pestered
with them. AS our late President
said, | might call it by a shorter and
uglier name of our letters.
With a lot of scrub cattle in the
swamp range they would come out IN
spring and be covered With ticks. and
could not be shipped north of the
quarantine line, even if they were
worth shipping, While with good cattle
kept on the farm and taken care of,
and the range abolished and the ticks
starved out, he could keep good beef
stock and make money from them.
There is one great advantage of
Well-kept dairy animals over beef
stock. This is that in the dairy the
money comes in every day in the year,
while With beef it is an annual thing.
and the getting of cash every day or
week is q great advantage for the sue
cessful cropping of the farm.
| have before mentioned two fields
of cotton | saw last summer, one ex-
ira fine and the next one across the
road Very poor: but when / was told
that the fine cotton was on a farm
where a dairyman lived. / understood
1t easily. The one man had manure of
fine quality and the other was a cot
ton planter. Probably the other man
thought it did not pay to feed cattle.
looking only to the actual direct return
from the cattle, and forgetting that
they would enable him to grow more
cotton and cheaper cotton.
some years ago q young man who
was running a small dairy farm in
Vermont wrote to me asking my ad-
vice. He wanted to know more about
daIrNing 50 as to make it pay better.
/ advised him to go to Cornell and
take a dairy course Of study. He took
my advice, and after completing the
course of study, was employed to run
a large dairy near Atlanta.
He wrote to me: d" | find tina | ca,
make as good butter here as ! could in
Vermont. can make it cheaper, be-
cause of the abundance of lesume feed
from peas, and can sell il for q better
price than in the North.". He is now
running a dairy in east Tennessee sue
ccSSfullN.
We have many crops that We can
grow, that the Northern dairyman
"iiti a. oiihlooH IioNtl, tlC..
and where Johnson grass has taken
the country, as it has in some parts of
Mississippi and Alabama. the johnson
grass hay Will be no mean help to the
dairyman, while it is a curse to the
all-cOttOn man. am no particular
friend to ohnSOn grass, for had
rather have a grass that l could con
troll instead of one that will control
me. Put whore it has once taken pos
session OF the country it may point
the way to profit with stock. Do not
introduce it where it is not. but where
1t has Sained the upper hand. use it to
prOfit.
cooperative creameries are all right