128 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Three-year-olds, from $4.75 to $5.00 per hundred. 



It is likely that these figures represent extreme differences, 

 but if they are even approximately correct, it shows an enormous 

 spread between the cost per pound of yearling, two-year-old, and a 

 material difference of three-year-old cattle, in comparison with 

 that of calves in the fall, and between yearlings on the one hand 

 and two and three-year-olds in the spring. The difference between 

 two-year-olds and three-year-olds, as given in the above summary, 

 if correctly representing the market, would seem to the writer, in 

 the light of our feeding experiments, irrational, but the reader 

 is referred to our bulletin on baby beef production, where this 

 matter is discussed in detail. 



Secondly, they can make the older cattle fat in less time with 

 more certainty, and they will fatten up more evenly and with less 

 attention to the niceties of feeding. 



Third, the older cattle, when not fully finished, will come 

 nearer selling for what they are worth than will young animals. 



Fourth, two of the cardinal principles of baby beef production 

 are that the animals must be choice in quality, and they must be 

 prime. This of very necessity eliminates a great majority of the 

 cattle from the possibility of being made into baby beef. 



After all, the whole question of baby beef interests the breeder 

 and raiser of cattle rather than the feeder, as these operations are 

 now divided. This means that the raiser of cattle on high-priced 

 land in the com belt is the one who will lose whatever is lost on 

 the three-year-old steer, or even on the two-year-old steer, or what- 

 ever is lost in the entire operation by the failure to fatten and mar- 

 ket him early. The professional feeder may be expected to con- 

 tinue to prefer to feed cattle that have passed the period of rapid 

 grovd:h, and have gotten to a point where they will take on fat 

 easily, rapidly and uniformly, so long as the breeder and raiser 

 will consent to grow them to this age for him, and sell them to him 

 with a sufficient margin, so that the feeding operation will prove 

 profitable. 



If the raiser and the feeder of cattle were the same man, it 

 would be but a short time until our cattle would be going to market 

 at from 14 to 18 months of age, instead of from 30 to 36 months of 

 age, under the conditions now prevailing in the corn belt. Already 

 there has been a marked tendency on the part of the farmer on 

 the high-priced land in the corn belt to go out of the business of 

 raising beef cattle. This has been particularly true under the in- 

 fluence of the high prices for corn that have prevailed in recent 



