116 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



During the past eleven years the Missouri station has con- 

 ducted a great many feeding trials, and has taken great pains in 

 the meantime to secure the results of the experience of thousands 

 of the most successful feeders, and when submitting their prac- 

 tice or conclusions to the most rigid experimental tests, we have 

 found that in a large majority of cases they had reached the cor- 

 rect conclusions and that their practices were well founded. 



WHAT IS BABY BEEF? 



Baby beef is now quite another thing from what it was fif- 

 teen or twenty years ago. Then a 30-months old steer weighing 

 1,400 pounds would have been classed as strictly baby beef, and 

 he would certainly have looked the part of a baby by the side of 

 the three or four or five-year-old bullocks, weighing from 1,800 

 to 2,200 pounds, thick, fat and hard. 



Our point of view has changed radically. These huge bul- 

 locks are no longer on the market, and if some one should be so 

 misguided as to make them now, there would be no one at the 

 market to welcome or to buy. The demands of the market have 

 changed. 



We have been gradually hastening our cattle to the market, 

 cutting down their ages and their weights, until a twelve months 

 old calf weighing 800 or 900 pounds will bring as high a price 

 as any other age or weight, provided he be fat. So size or weight 

 does not any longer constitute a limitation to baby beef produc- 

 tion. 



According to our present understanding of baby beef, no steer 

 would be so classed outside of his yearling form, and as a rule the 

 maximum age would be from 18 to 20 months, and the maximum 

 weight from 1,100 to 1,300 pounds. This means that the feeding 

 operation begins with the calf at weaning time, approximately at 

 six months old, weighing 450 to 500 pounds, and continues with- 

 out interruption until the animal is fat. Some even go farther, 

 and begin the feeding period as soon as the calf is old enough to 

 eat and while it is still running with its dam, and place these 

 animals on the market the following June or July at 14 or 15 

 months of age, and weighing from 800 to 1,100 pounds. 



THE PROFESSIONAL FEEDER'S PRACTICE. 



Some years ago the writer sent a circular to about 3,000 of 

 the leading feeders of Missouri, Iowa and Illinois, interviewing 



