HOW SHALL WE IMPROVE OUR COMMON CATTLE? 115 



Whether it pays or not I don't know. I presume if the actual cost of feeding 

 some of these fancy steers were counted there would not be much profit. 



Mr. Phelps : I wished to draw out discussion of the question of profit. I 

 claim that five dollars' worth of feed given a year, over and above the ordinary 

 care or ordinary feed that an animal has, will return double. In some of 

 the bad cases that I mentioned, if they had had even five dollars' worth more 

 feed than they did, instead of bringing fifteen dollars apiece, the animals would 

 have brought thirty dollars. Now I ask any farmer if it pays to just keep the 

 animal alive ? TJie only way I can make it pay is to have it progress right from 

 the start until it is disposed of. I go out among the farmers of the town of Avon, 

 and I find hundreds that will carry their cattle through the winter and then 

 get 115 or $20 apiece for them. Their cattle are well enough bred to make 

 beef without any trouble if they will only give them the feed, but they expect 

 to sell all their grain and keep the animals on the straw stack ; or they feed 

 grain and then water them through a half-chopped hole in the ice and leave them 

 out shivering in the winter wind for hours at a time, and then wonder at get- 

 ting no profits. It is the poorest kind of policy to sell off all your grain and 

 starve your cattle. I am an advocate of thoroughbred cattle, but I would not 

 sell to a man who I thought would not take good care of an animal. 



Mr. VanHoosen : I agree with most of the speakers except Mr. Yates, who 

 thinks that the Herefords are the only good animals. I think they are good 

 beef cattle, but there are many other good cattle. I am an advocate of Short- 

 horn cattle. They are a good beef cattle, good dairy cattle, good for milk and 

 butter, good for all purposes. They are the cattle, but as the paper says, they 

 want to be well cared for. If they are not well cared for, they will not pay. 

 If it pays to keep cattle at all, it pays to keep them well. I saw once an 

 account of a man that tried an experiment with two pigs, just of a size and 

 age. He fed one pig just enough to keep it alive, in good squealing order; the 

 other he fed just one pound more a day. It was wonderful to see how it grew. 

 So you see, as Mr. Phelps said, it is the last pound that does the good. It takes 

 just so much to sustain nature, after that the food goes to flesh and growth. 

 Now I think it becomes all of us farmers to keep fewer animals and keep 

 them better. 



Mr. Graham : Feeding animals to make tliem groio pays, but to merely keep 

 them alive has no profit in it. A ton of hay worth $13, will just keep a 3-year- 

 old alive through the winter without increasing his weight, and unless the mar- 

 ket has raised so that our animal is worth more per pound, we are out of pocket 

 just $13.00 and our trouble. I have found that any animal fliat is kept on 

 barely enough to sustain life becomes stunted, the growth is stopped, as one 

 man said about his pigs, they get a shell on them and it takes more food to 

 start them growing again. A poorly fed animal does not grow well shaped. 

 He is raw-boned, big-headed, sharp-nosed. Add a few more bushels to the 

 ration and it will make the profit. I can just keep an animal alive this win- 

 ter at the cost of summer pasture. Add three cents per day of grain and you 

 add from five to fifteen cents per day value. 



Mr. Beaker : I can not starve an animal fat. It takes a certain amount to 

 keep up animal heat ; what is added to this is the first profit. If the animal 

 will eat ten quarts of meal a day extra it is so much profit. I have raised 

 much stock and the nearer thoroughbred I have them the more profit I find. A 

 bushel of grain fed I consider equal to one dollar in the value of the animal. 

 My experience supports this. I prefer ground feed. 



Mr. David Randall: When I feed an animal that does not gain I lose my feed, 



