160 Missouri Agricultural Rej^fort. 



It will be recalled that a difference as high as $1.20 per hun- 

 dred was shown in one of the Ottawa trials, and the Kansas ex- 

 periment showed a difference of 80 cents per hundred. 



It was expected that the difference in cost of gain between 

 j'earlings and two-year-olds would be less in the Missouri experi- 

 ments than in the other trials reported, for the reason that there 

 was less difference in the condition of the animals at the close. That 

 is, the two classes of animals were more nearly uniform in degree of 

 fatness at the close of the trials at the Missouri Station than was 

 the case at Ottawa or Kansas. 



In one sense, it would be fairer to take the entire record of 

 the yearlings, from the time they were put on full feed the previ- 

 ous Christmas time until they were marketed, and the record of 

 the two-year-olds, from the time they were put on full feed, May 1st. 

 If this were done, it is certain that the difference in the cost of 

 gain would be larger than the results here given show, because the 

 yearlings as well as the two-year-olds would have had the ad- 

 vantage of the earlier portion of the feeding period, when the cost 

 of gains is relatively low. For the purposes of this discussion, 

 however, as before intimated, we are taking the view of the pro- 

 fessional feeder, who buys his feeders for delivery about May Ist, 

 and who, if buying yearlings, to make prime for the following 

 Christmas market, would necessarily buy animals that had been 

 well warmed, and if buying older cattle, would not require them 

 to be carrying the flesh that the younger ones would hnve to finish 

 at the same time. It is believed, therefore, that the method em- 

 ployed in this discussion Vv^ill be more nearly adapted to the com- 

 mercial practices, and the figures given will be more nearly ap- 

 plicable to the conditions of summer feeding in the corn belt than 

 would the incorporation of the wintering data with the summer 

 feeding results. 



The difference noted in the cost per hundred pounds of gain 

 in the Missouri experiments in the first trial, in 1904, ranged all 

 the way from $1.50 to $2.80 per head, with an average of $1.32 

 per head, when the difference per hundred pounds between year- 

 lings and two-year-olds is applied to the total season's gains made 

 by the latter. This means that had the feeder been intending to 

 use shelled corn on bluegrass, it would have been necessary for 

 him to have bought his two-year-olds, according to that year's 

 results, at 29 cents per hundred less than his yearlings, or to have 

 sold them for 19 cents per hundred more. Had he been intending 

 to combine with his shelled corn a limited amount of linseed meal, 



