ABSTRACT
As the original census schedules show, most early nineteenth-century farmers kept stock which tied them to the farm, but they did not give them the attention and care that was customary for English farmers. Timothy Pickering deplored the poor pastures, opened to cattle too early in the spring; and the lack of care in housing livestock that was generally characteristic of New England farms. The condition and care of cattle and other livestock in the South and West was even worse than in the North. Some grade cows gave extraordinary amounts of milk that were duly noted in the local farm journals. In Ohio, where there was an abundance of cheap com and where most farmers had surplus hogs which it would scarcely have paid them individually to drive to market, hog buying and fattening became important. The story of the introduction of good-blooded swine involves many gentleman farmers as well as stock improvement and importing associations.
