The Republican journal., 1910-08-11
Stock on the Potato Farm.
In Some Seasons Feeding Is More
Profitable Than Selling the Tubers.

Ill ooIhe oedSoHS TeeQInS IS NOIe
Profitable Than Selling the Tubers.
E. C. Dow in the N. Y Tribune Farmer]
The season just passed mas served well
/ to illustrate the value of some kind of
livestock on the potato farm. With an
overstocked spring potato market and a
large supply in growers hands, it has
| been impossible to find ready sale at
any price. While most growers have
sold what they could at prices ranging
from Is to rs cents bushel, it has been
impossible to place them all, even at
these low prices. The man who has run
almost wholly to potatoes has had to lose
many bushels unless he has been within
reasonable distance of a starch factory,
where he may have sold some at about
their feeding value on the farm.
But the man who has good farm
stock, especially cows, has had a market
for most or all of his surplus at home,
where the returns have been as good as
the market has netted shippers in many
instances.
l do not think it profitable to grow po-
tatoes especially for feeding purposes,
but they are good food for all farm ami
mails and are especially valuable for
cows in milk.
The man who is running a dairy and
making the potato crop his chief money
crop has an advantage over the one who
depends wholly or in a large part on the
potato for the most of his income.
On most Eastern farms that have been
long under cultivation the one great need
is for more frequent ploughing, more
fertility and more humus. The farm
manure furnishes the last of the trio in
the best possible form, and also the fer
tility at less cost than it can be bought
in the markets. With the stock to fur
nish manure for one dressing of the
fields in each period of crop rotation,
whether it be one of three or five years,
it is much easier and more profitable to
keep up the humus and fertility of the
soil.
Much might be said in favor of the
cows along this line of thought, but as it
is in connection with potato growing that
| am now advocating the COW will not
go too much into the details of dairy
farming as business. 1t is a fact that
years like the last will come again, per
haps more often than not when the mar
kets cannot use all the potatoes that have
been produced. What shall we do with
the unstable part of the crop in such
years of plenty? One would not advise
the building of many more starch fac
tories, as there is not an unlimited de-
mand for starch, and the price is now as
low as it can be manufactured at a profit
The only safe conclusion is that we must
be prepared to use up the crop at home
when it cannot be sold at profit and
thus avoid total loss
What is a. bushel of potatoes worth as
food for mich cows? ] do not know. 1t
depends on the price of the cows prod
uct.
But | do know from my own experience
that they are relished by the cows and
that they increase the milk flow and the
cream yield. | certainly would not think
of selling potatoes from the farm at Is
to 20 cents bushel as long as the COWS
could use them to good advantage.
Again, the pig is a natural sequence of
the COW where cream or butter is Sold
and potatoes are an excellent food for
growing pigs and mature brood sows. |
personally know of one man who says
and he is considered truthful, that he
wintered five or six brood sows almost
wholly on potatoes and they did we'll and
narrowed large filters of pigs, which were
sold at wholesale for 81 each for the lot
when four weeks old. That sounds like
good business. Without the hogs the
potatoes would not have turned him any
thing, as in this instance they were not
of market quality.
am coming more and more to believe
that some form of stock husbandry must
lie at the foundation of our Eastern agri-
culture. While there are chances for
success along special lines in special
locations, stock husbandry, especially
dairying. combined with some special
money crop to which the farm and man
are adapted, is the surest road to success
on most of our farms. Hence, the man
whose money crop is potatoes should
have all the good stock of some kind his
farm will carry, or, what amounts to the
same thing, that the available working
force can care for.
l am not advocating the growing of
potatoes as speciality, but l am advo-
eating the COW, or other farm animals,
for the man who is a potato grower. 1t
will be found the only safe method to
make the business profitable in the long
run.
To keep your health sound; to avoid the ills