Part 15 (2/2)
It is claimed that it is unnatural and artificial to confine these young things within such narrow limits, and so it is; but the whole scheme is unnatural, if you please. The pig is born to die, and to die quickly, for the profit and maintenance of man. What could be more unnatural?
Would he be better reconciled to his fate after spending his nine months between field and sty? I wot not. The Chester White is an indolent fellow, and I suspect he loves his comfortable house, his cool stone porch, his back yard to dig in, his neighbors across the wire fence to gossip with, and his well-balanced, well-cooked food served under his own nose three times a day. At least he looks content in his piggery, and grows faster and puts on more flesh in his 250 days than does his neighbor of the field. If the hog's profitable life were twice or thrice as long, I would advocate a wider liberty for the early part of it; but as it doesn't pay to keep the animal after he is nine months old, the quickest way to bring him to perfection is the best. One cannot afford to graze animals of any kind when one is trying to do intensive farming.
It is indirect, it is wasteful of s.p.a.ce and energy, and it doesn't force the highest product. Grazing, as compared with soiling, may be economical of labor, but as I understand economics that is the one thing in which we do not wish to economize. The multiplication of well-paid and well-paying labor is a thing to be specially desired. If the soiling farm will keep two or three more men employed at good wages, and at the same time pay better interest than the grazing farm, it should be looked upon as much the better method. The question of furnis.h.i.+ng landscape for hogs is one that borders too closely on the aesthetic or the sentimental to gain the approval of the factory-farm man. What is true of hogs is also true of cows. They are better off under the constant care of intelligent and interested human beings than when they follow the rippling brook or wind slowly o'er the lea at their own sweet pleasure.
The truth is, the rippling brook doesn't always furnish the best water, and the lea furnishes very imperfect forage during nine months of the year. A twenty-acre lot in good gra.s.s, in which to take the air, is all that a well-regulated herd of fifty cows needs. The clean, cool, calm stable is much to their liking, and the regular diet of a first-cla.s.s cow-kitchen insures a uniform flow of milk.
What is true of hogs and cows is true also of hens. The common opinion that the farm-raised hen that has free range is healthier or happier than her sister in a well-ordered hennery is not based on facts. Freedom to forage for one's self and pick up a precarious living does not always mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenuous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort with the quiet house and the freedom from anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes of life are terrible for the uncooped chicken. The occupants of air, earth, and water lie in wait for it. It is fair game for the hawk and the owl; the fox, the weasel, the rat, the wood p.u.s.s.y, the cat, and the dog are its sworn enemies. The horse steps on it, the wheel crushes it; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel; it is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, and, as the English say, it has a ”rather indifferent time of it.” If it survive the summer, and some chickens do, it will roost and s.h.i.+ver on the limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible only to the mink and the rat; and, like Rachel, it will mourn for its children, which are not.
No, the well-yarded hen has by all odds the best of it. The wonder is that, with three-fourths of the poultry at large and making its own living, hens still furnish a product, in this country alone, $100,000,000 greater in value than the whole world's output of gold. Our annual production of eggs and poultry foots up to $280,000,000,--$4 apiece for every man, woman, and child,--and yet people say that hens do not pay!
Each flock of forty hens at Four Oaks has a house sixteen feet by twenty, and a run twenty feet by one hundred. I hear no complaints of close quarters or lack of freedom, but I do hear continually the song of contentment, and I see results daily that are more satisfactory than those of any oil well or mine in which I have ever been interested.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
SPRING OF '97
Sam began to make up his breeding pens in January. He selected 150 of his favorites, divided them into 10 flocks of 15, added a fine c.o.c.kerel to each pen (we do not allow c.o.c.ks or c.o.c.kerels to run with the laying hens), and then began to set the incubator house in order.
He filled the first incubator on Sat.u.r.day, January 30, and from that day until late in April he was able to start a fresh machine about every six days. Sam reports the total hatch for the year as 1917 chicks, out of which number he had, when he separated them in the early autumn, 678 pullets to put in the runs for laying hens, and 653 c.o.c.kerels to go to the fattening pens. These figures show that Sam was a first-cla.s.s chicken man.
We secured 300 tons of ice at the side of the lake for $98, having to pay a little more that year than the last, on account of the heavy fall of snow.
The wood-house was replenished, although there was still a good deal of last year's cut on hand. We did not fell any trees, for there was still a considerable quant.i.ty of dead wood on the ground which should be used first. I wanted to clear out much of the useless underbrush, but we had only time to make a beginning in this effort at forestry. We went over perhaps ten acres across the north line, removing briers and brush.
Everything that looked like a possible future tree was left. Around oak and hickory stumps we found clumps of bushes springing from living roots. These we cut away, except one or possibly two of the most thrifty. We trimmed off the lower branches of those we saved, and left them to make such trees as they could. I have been amazed to see what a growth an oak-root sprout will make after its neighbors have been cut away. There are some hundreds of these trees in the forest at Four Oaks, from five to six inches in diameter, which did not measure more than one or two inches five years ago.
As the underbrush was cleared from the wood lot, I planned to set young trees to fill vacant s.p.a.ces. The European larch was used in the first experiment. In the spring of 1897 I bought four thousand seedling larches for $80, planted them in nursery rows in the orchard, cultivated them for two years, and then transplanted them to the forest. The larch is hardy and grows rapidly; and as it is a valuable tree for many purposes, it is one of the best for forest planting. I have planted no others thus far at Four Oaks, as the four thousand from my little nursery seem to fill all unoccupied s.p.a.ces.
Fresh mulching was piled near all the young fruit trees, to be applied as soon as the frost was out of the ground. Several hundreds of loads of manure were hauled to the fields, to be spread as soon as the snow disappeared. I always return manure to the land as soon as it can be done conveniently. The manure from the hen-house was saved this year to use on the alfalfa fields, to see how well it would take the place of commercial fertilizer. I may as well give the result of the experiment now.
It was mixed with sand and applied at the rate of eight hundred pounds an acre for the spring dressing over a portion of the alfalfa, against four hundred pounds an acre of the fertilizer 3:8:8. After two years I was convinced that, when used alone, it is not of more than half the value of the fertilizer.
My present practice is to use five hundred pounds of hen manure and two hundred pounds of fertilizer on each acre for the spring dressing, and two hundred pounds an acre of the fertilizer alone after each cutting except the last. We have ten or twelve tons of hen manure each year, and it is nearly all used on the alfalfa or the timothy as spring dressing.
It costs nothing, and it takes off a considerable sum from the fertilizer account. I am not at all sure that the scientists would approve this method of using it; I can only give my experience, and say that it brings me satisfactory crops.
There was much snow in January and February, and in March much rain.
When the spring opened, therefore, the ground was full of water. This was fortunate, for April and May were unusually dry months,--only 1.16 inches of water.
The dry April brought the ploughs out early; but before we put our hands to the plough we should make a note of what the first quarter of 1897 brought into our strong box.
Sold: b.u.t.ter . . . . $842.00 Eggs . . . . 401.00 Cow . . . . 35.00 Two sows . . . 19.00 Total . . . $1297.00
Fifteen of the young sows farrowed in March, and the other 9 in April, as also did 18 old ones. The young sows gave us 147 pigs, and the old ones 161, so that the spring opened with an addition to our stock of 300 head of young swine.
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