THE HEADMAN'S JOB
Our life at Four Oaks began in earnest in January, 1897. Even during the
winter months there was no lack of employment and interest for the
Headman. I breakfasted at seven, and from that time until noon I was as
busy as if I were working for $20 a month. The master's eye is worth
more than his hand in a factory like mine. My men were, and are, an
unusual lot,--intelligent, sober, and willing,--but they, like others,
are apt to fall into routine ways, and thereby to miss points which an
observing proprietor would not overlook.
The cows, for instance, were all fed the same ration. Fifteen pounds of
mixed grains was none too much for the big Holstein milk-makers, who
were yielding well and looking in perfect health; but the common cows
were taking on too much flesh and falling off in milk. I at once changed
the ration for these six cows by leaving out the corn entirely and
substituting oat straw for alfalfa in the cut feed. The change brought
good results in five of the cows; the other one did not pick up in her
milk, and after a reasonable trial I sold her.
The herd was doing excellently for mid-winter,--the yield amounted to a
daily average of 840 pounds throughout the month, and I was able to make
good my contract with the middleman. I could see breakers ahead,
however, and it behooved me to make ready for them. I decided to buy ten
more thoroughbreds in new milk, if I could find them. I wrote to the
people from whom I had purchased the first herd, and after a little
delay secured nine cows in fresh milk and about four years old. This
addition came in February, and kept my milk supply above the danger
point. Since then I have bought no cows. Thirty-four of these
thoroughbreds are still at Four Oaks--two of them have died, and three
have been sold for not keeping up to the standard--and are doing grand
service. Their numbers have been reënforced by twenty of their best
daughters, so there are at this writing fifty-four milch cows and five
yearling heifers in the herd. Most of the calves have been disposed of
as soon as weaned. I have no room for more stock on my place, and it
doesn't pay to keep them to sell as cows. Four Oaks is not a breeding
farm, but a factory farm, and everything has to be subordinated to the
factory idea.
My thoroughbred calves have brought me an average price of $12 each at
four to six weeks, sold to dairymen, and I am satisfied to do business
in that way. The nine milch cows which I bought to complete the herd
cost, delivered at Four Oaks, $1012.
All the grain fed to cows, horses, and hogs, and a portion of that fed
to chickens, is ground fine before feeding. The grinding is done in the
granary by a mill with a capacity of forty bushels an hour. We make corn
meal, corn and cob meal, and oatmeal enough for a week's supply in a few
hours. All hay and straw is cut fine, before being fed, by a power
cutter in the forage barn, and from thence is taken by teams in box
racks to the feeding rooms, where it is wetted with hot water and mixed
with the ground feed for the cows and horses, and steamed or cooked with
the ground feed for the hogs and hens.
Alfalfa is the only hay used for the hens, and wonderfully good it is
for them. Besides feed for the hogs, we have to provide ashes, salt, and
charcoal for them. These three things are kept constantly before them in
narrow troughs set so near the wall that they cannot get their feet into
them.
We carefully save all wood ashes for the hogs and hens, and we burn our
own charcoal in a pit in the wood lot. Five cords of sound wood make an
abundant supply for a year. I think this side dish constantly before
swine goes a long way toward keeping them healthy. Clean pens,
well-balanced and well-cooked food, pure water, and this medicine can
be counted on to keep a growing and fattening herd healthy during its
nine months of life.
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 space 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
furnishing landscape for hogs is one that borders too closely on the
æsthetic 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 grass, 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-class
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 pussy, 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
shiver 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.