FENCES
Some ten years since, someone estimated that for every dollar’s worth of live stock kept in New York another dollar was expended in fences to restrain it. It is probable that this estimate is below rather than above the facts. Be this as it may, the first cost of fences and their maintenance is a serious draft on the resources of the farmer.
Fig. 137. The old-time fence system on the right; the present condition on the left.
In the pioneer days, when even the best of fencing material was so abundant that it was burned to clear the land, there was great temptation to split the tender logs into great rails and construct fences with them. Each winter a few acres of land were cleared and each year’s clearing was surrounded by a great ten-rail fence, which served to discourage some of the larger wild animals from destroying the crops. It is easily seen why our ancestors in the wooded districts fenced the farm into small fields. In some cases the surface stones were so numerous on the land that the larger ones had to be removed to make way for the plow. Naturally they were used for constructing fences, for the most economical way to get rid of these too numerous stones was to make fences of them. The haul was short and the fences could be increased in width and height until storage room was provided for all the rocks which the farmer cared to remove. So here, too, the temptation was great to fence the farm into small fields. The following diagrams show the fields and the fences as they were on the old homestead, and also as they are at the present time ([Fig. 137]).
Changed agricultural conditions imply fewer fences and the adoption, in part at least, of the soiling system. Then, too, the introduction of the horn-fly makes a radical change imperative in the summering of the dairy. This worst of all dairy pests robs the cow of flesh and the owner of profit.
Now that the silo is an assured success, except under rare conditions, soiling, or the partial soiling system, should be adopted on many farms, especially in the dairy districts. The object should be to provide a continuous and full supply of food, and comfortable conditions for the animals at all times. In May and June the pastures are succulent and the grasses usually abundant, and the annoying flies are not present. When the animals are first turned out on the pastures the nights may be too cold and damp for comfort, in which case they may be stabled and fed a small supplemental ration; in fact, cows in milk should always receive some dry, concentrated food for the first few weeks after they are turned out to grass. Often the early grass is over-succulent and deficient in food constituents to such an extent that the cows cannot eat enough to sustain life and produce the most profitable quantities of milk. When the pastures begin to fail, the flies appear and the days are hot, manifestly the animals will be most comfortable in the stables in the day time and in the pastures at night. This system will permit of reducing the pastures nearly one-half, and the removal of all fences except those which surround the permanent pasture land. If it is desired occasionally to pasture a part of the unenclosed land, a light woven wire fence, which can be easily erected and removed, may be constructed. All changes in the present system of summering animals should be towards smaller areas of pasture-land, fewer fences, more comfortable conditions for animals, economy of effort, and control of food-supplies for the animals at all seasons of the year.
In most of the states the laws require each farmer to restrain his own animals without the aid of the neighbors; hence the road-fence, often the most unsightly and ill kept of all the fences, may be discarded. How many of the inside fences would best be removed depends upon circumstances; but certain it is that a more rational system of restraining and feeding cattle will be adopted than the one now almost universally in use. We cannot destroy the hornfly; we can remove the useless fences and house the animals in stables from which the pestiferous flesh- and milk-reducing flies are excluded.