The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 10, 1917, Page 7

Better farming is one and increase neighboring states. When a hardy animal that also promises to be a good milk producer is wanted, the tendency is to go to New Salem. Not only do the members of the circuit find a good market for all the animals they can spare; the name “New Salem” is be- coming so inseparably. connected with the idea of high grade dairy cattle that gome farmers there, not on the breed- ing circuit and in no way connected with the experiment, have found ready means of disposing of their animals to buyers who have come to New Salem to get stock from circuit members. In this connection it might be well to re- mind purchasers of cattle that in buy- ing they ought not to depend merely ‘on the locality from which the animals come; it i3 the stock from which they are produced that is more important. How about the individual farmers on the circuit? The four classes into which the cows were divided were explained before. In 1914, for instance, there were only 15 cows rated in the first class, 21 in the second class, 15 in the third and gix in the fourth. The next year the number of first class cows had in- creased to 24 and there was not a fourth class cow in the New Salem herds. It may be said in passing that even the fourth class cow, under this rating, is a small money maker and is better than the average dairy cow of: the state. But the third, second and ' first class cows, eating no more and producing more milk, give profits that incrase in geometric ratio. INCREASING PROFITS BY. INTELLIGENT GROUP WORK' - All records for' the year 1916 have . riot been compiled yet. Professor Shepperd. has ' compiled, however, the - records of one herd of 14 cows which promises to prove one of the best on * the circuit. When the experiment started in 1910 this farmer's herd had an average butter :fat production of 131.9 pounds, which is about the butter fat production of the average cow in the state. ‘The herd showed a profit that year of '$16.90 per cow. That profit can’t be made today on a 131.9 pound cow, however, on account of the increased cost of-feed, in fact, there is likely to be almost that much deficit. In 1916 the average butter fat pro- . duction of this herd had leaped to 4217.6 pounds. Feed cost $57.30 per cow, as compared with $27.25 six years be- fore, but in spite of the doubled feed cost the herd showed a net profit of $90.24 per cow. All of this profit was not due to im-' proved breed. The New Salem circuit hembers are progressive in more ways than by improving the blood lines of’ the herd. During the progress of their experiment they had all put in Grimm - alfalfa: Most of ‘them -installed silos. In every way. they proved themselves wideawake and 'wiling to take advan- tage of experience::+The combined re- sult of-all this has been the marked * improvement »in- -production and the establishment of -‘a stable market for their surplus stock. . The second of the experiments of the college to be related at'this time, deals take to improve his condition. Better meth- ods of handling and distribution of the farm products is another step. If the farmer con- trolled the machinery of distribution and could be insured a fair price he would be en- couraged to adopt better farming methods step for a farmer to production. with the successful pasturing of heef cattle. North Dakota is experiencing changing conditions in this respect. Except for portions of the ‘“bad lands”, the day of the open range has passed. Most of the land of the 'state is too valuable to be used for pasture. { But there is within the state a total of 6,645 square miles suitable for graz- ing and nothing else. Think of what this means. If it were in one square tract it would be 81 miiles along each edge. If it were placed in the form of a “string” two miles wide, it would reach from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific. It is only 9.1-3 per cent of the. total area of North Dakota, but it is an area greater than the total size of Rhode Island, Deleware or Conneticut. FINDING HOW MUCH PASTURE A STEER NEEDS Only a comparatively small portion of this grazing area is put to use at present. It is the idea of the college -authorities, and also of the experts of the United States department of agri- culture, that virtually all of this land will have to be put to work some day, and the sooner the better. So a year ago, when the government authorities established their half-gection experi- mental farm at Mandan, arrangements were made to secure from the state use of a neighboring school section for a series of years for experiments to de- termine how much pasture a steer needs. Upon this factor depends the chances of making use of this idle land. Before' the experiment was started Professor” Shepperd undertook to see what stockmen knéw about the' mat- ter. He wrote letters to stockmen in all parts of the state, asking the ques- tion “How much pasture does a steer need?” The answers showed how far from definite knowledge the stockmen were. Some placed their estimate as low as an acre and a half and some went as high as forty acres. Suspect- ing that the truth lay somewhere be- tween these two extremes, the . state and federal investigators have laid out four separate experiment fields at Mandan., One field contains 30 acres; another, 50 acres; a third, 70 acres; the fourth, 100 acres. In each field 10 steers are being pastured, so that the investigators can determine just how the steer with only three acres to forage over compares with his broth- ers, who have five, seven or ten acres apiece, 5 Hengerveld Ormsby De Kol, Holstein bull on New Salem breeding circuit. “This bull was chosen as the result of careful breeding experiments, as the best to l;.\e.ad a new type of Holstein dairy cattle, especially adapted for Northwestern conditions. The New Salem farmers made a success of their breeding circuit and other enterprises . because they worked together in their own locality. Think how much bigger a success might be made of the dairy business if all ... the dairymen in the state were work- : ' ing together. This is how a plant census is made in the grazing experiments. Every plant within the quadrat, a frame one meter square, is counted and classified separately. After several such counts have been made in various parts of a pasture, the total number of plants can be estimated closely. This is done again after the cattle have grazed on the tract ong year. Of course each steer was weighed carefully before being turned out to pasture and the weighing process is being continued from time to time to determine whether he gains or loses weight. The investigation goes farther than to determine the effect upon the steer, however. The state and govern- ment men want to know what hap- pens to the pasture, too. Although a steer might be able to do well for a year on a two or*three-acre tract, it would be poor economy to pasture them in this manner if it would have the result of destroying the pasture. COUNTING THE BLADES OF GRASS IN A FIELD To determine accurately the effect on the pasture is the hardest part of the work of investigation. To start with, the investigators had to find the exact condition of the pasture at the begi;ming. This involved a close esti- mate of the exact number of separate plants on the entire tract. To secure this estimate, an exact census was made of typical small areas. A “quadrat”, a wooden frame one meter, or a little more than a yard, square, was laid upon the ground and the ac- tual plants within this frame were counted, inch by inch, and classified. Seventeen main species of vegetation occur, and several hundred specimens of the principal species were found within each quadrat, so it may be seen that the plant census of one square vard is no child’s play. _The pre- dominant species of grasses on the Mandan section were found to be Bouteloua ‘Gracilis, which is the Latin name for blue grama, often incorrectly, so the federal authorities claim, called “buffalo grass, and Stipa Comata, or western needle grass. The investigators in this manner get a plant census of each pasture at the beginning of the experiment and similarly they will get a census of each pasture at the end of each year. As a further ' check on the experiment a small strip of land, about ten rods long and a rod wide, is fenced off in each pasture. The experiment is planned to last ten years, so at the end of each vear the fence at the end of this strip will be moved back one rod. ‘When the experiment is over, there will be ten blocks, a -rod 'square, in each pasturd. Side by side will be a block that has been used by pasture for 10 years, one for nine years, one for eight years, and so on down to the block that has been used only one year, to ‘give a graphic illustration of just what happens to land used for pasture for . varying number of years under vary- - ing conditions. 2 . The experiments has been under way only a little more than a year now, but it has progressed far enough to in- dicate that three acres is not enpdugh pasture for a steer under ordinary SEVEN circumstances. The ten steers that were pastured on the 30-acre tract have gained in weight, but not as much as their brothers who had five, seven and ten acres apiece, and toward the end of the first year they suffered some losses in weight. Also, the pasture was pretty well depleted at th¢ end of the year. THE “GINGER COOKIE"” OF THE BEEF STEER In regard to the relative merits of the five, seven and ten-acre alottments of ground, the experiment has not progressed far enough yet to give final results. One thing that has been in- dicated, though, is that while stock will prefer certain grasses and eat nothing else if given a large area to work over, _they will widen their range of diet if confined to a smaller area and still do very nicely. They might be compared to a small boy who undoubtedly would choose to subsist entirely on ginger cookies if he had his choice, but prob- ably would get along just as well and maybe a little bit’ better-if compelled to eat some bread and butter and meat and potatoes instead of sticking to an exclusive cookie diet. The cookie, as far as the stock is concerned, is the grass known by stockmen as big blue stem and by the. scientists as Andro- pogon Scoparius. The steers on the Mandan experimental pastures eat all the big blue stem they can find first of all, before looking for anything else, and keep it cropped closely as fast as it grows up, but they also are thriving on the blue grama and other grasses. There is plenty of other experimental work that promises to be of value to farmers being done at the Fargo ex- periment station. For instance, L. R. ‘Waldron, brother of the dean of agri- culture, is breeding up a superior quality of brome grass, a valuable forage grass, seeking to establish one variety for pasture use and one for hay. This involves hundreds after hundreds of experiments in selective breeding. It will have the result, if successful, not perhaps of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before, but of making a big blade grow where formerly there was only a little one, which amounts to the same thing. > : - Hail Insurance : Upham, N. D, Editor Nonpartisan Leader: I had a talk with' a hail insurance man yesterday and he informed me that rates will be higher this year than was the ¢ase in 1916. Last year the rates were, $65 per thousand and this year he says they will be $75 to $80 and more for some kinds of crops. The insurance interests will surely hold up the farmer this year good and plenty. I read in the Courier-News that President Wilson has the right to put a price on 'our wheat, that is what it should be sold for. Well then, it cer- tainly appears that he should have the right to place the price on hail insur- ‘ance and he ought to make it 50 cents an acre, the same as it is in Canada, or make it $15 or $20 a thousand. Or I would suggest that Governor Frazier send the hail insurance bill that was defeated by the reactionary senate at: the last session. of the legislature to President Wilson and have him O. K. it with the idea of putting it into force. This will relieve the hail insurance - companies from writing the insurance at cost and give it to the state of North Dakota. . KNUTE STEENERSON. R