Country Life
HORSE OR TRACTOR ?
Two letters, one direct, one indirect, have reached me from Canada, urging me to insist on the superiority of the horse to the tractor. One farmer says : " Tractors are very much out of fashion in Central and Upper Alberta at present . . The farmers who got rid of their horses and bought tractors have found that they cannot raise enough wheat to pay the cost of operating their tractors, while those who stuck to old Dobbin have something left after paying for twine and thresh- ing." He urges, therefore, the use of ten or twelve horse teams hitched according to a special system and manageable by one man. The view is surprising to English people, who regard the Prairie Provinces as the home of mechanized farm- ing. It is curious, too, that our specialists—both at Oxford and Rothamsted—urge the tractor for the reason that it is more economical, and, of course, much quicker. The heavy horse is both dear and expensive to keep. Yet many farmers begin to find that, though feed may be at least as expensive as oil and petrol, the Shire does not cost half as much in repairs. I have heard a farmer say, in effect, " The tractor needs shoeing twice as often as the old horse." Dobbin enjoys a certain revival, though more on the small farm than on the big.
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