Farmers Rules

Farmers’ Rules With the coming of the railways, came, often complex, fares and freight tables and rules ! It was easy for the Campbeltown steamer-men to understand their rates but officials must have been bewildered on occasion. Even if it is easy to count cattle and sheep ‘by the head’, farmers and butchers had to value animals more precisely. Some railway stations introduced weigh-bridges, but why not stick to an old fashioned measuring tape like the butchers. Measure round the beast, the cow, close behind its shoulder and square the result; measure its back from the fore-part of its shoulder-blade to the bone at its tail and multiply this length by 5. These results, measured in feet, are multiplied together and that result is divided by 21 to give the beast’s weight in stones, 14 lb units - this is the total weight of the four quarters of the beast which will be slightly less than half the total weight of the live animal. For very fat cattle, add 5% and, conversely, subtract 5% of the weight if very lean. About 5-6% of the beast’s total live weight is in the hide and some 8-9% in the tallow. Farmers also used tapes to measure the weight of haystacks. Multiply the length of the stack by its width; measure the height of the stack to the eaves and then measure one-third of the height between the eaves and the top of the stack. Multiply these results together and divide the answer by 27. If the hay is less than 3 months old then multiply again by 6; if older than 3 months, by 7 and, for the oldest hay, by 8. The result gives the corresponding weight per cubic yard, in stones.