Live Stock Breeders* Association. 165 



olds, instead of having to be bought even for the same, and that 

 the professional feeder is making a mistake when he pays 

 more per pound for three-year-olds than he would be required to 

 pay for two-year-olds of the same quality. 



It goes without saying that animals of great uniformity, fine 

 finishing and early maturing qualities are required if they are to be 

 fitted for the market in the calf form. The coarse, common, rough 

 steer will mature too slowly and manifest too strong a tendency 

 to grow and become fat with too great uncertainty to be handled 

 profitably in this way. When in his two or three-year-old form, 

 when most of the tendency to grow has been satisfied, this same 

 animal will as a rule fatten rapidly and sell when fat for a fair price. 



The difficulty of getting together a sufficient number of young 

 animals of a quality that would justify the fattening of them as 

 calves, and the usual high price which animals of this quality com- 

 mand, and the cost of buying them one or two in a place, all in- 

 fluence in a marked way the practice of the feeder. It cannot ba 

 too strongly emphasized that thus far the whole question has been 

 considered from the view point of the professional feeder, or the 

 man who buys cattle, puts them in his feed yards, fits them for 

 market and sells them. To him, as has been before pointed out, 

 it is a matter of supreme indifference what ages of cattle he feeds 

 or what these animals may have cost the man who raised them, 

 so long as he is permitted to buy them at a price that will enable 

 him to fit them for market at a profit. It may be accepted, there- 

 fore, as final, that so long as he can buy the older cattle with suf- 

 ficient margin to fully overcome the increased cost of gains made in 

 his feed yard, he will consider it to his advantage to feed them in 

 preference to younger animals, in view of the fact that they have 

 at that age been already bunched and can be bought by the carload 

 or the hundred in fairly uniform condition and of uniform age, 

 size, color and quality, because they may be fitted for market in 

 much less time, will fatten more uniformly, will require less care- 

 ful attention, etc. 



THE CATTLE RAISER THE MAN WHO IS INTERESTED IN BABY BEEF. 



We cannot escape the conclusion, therefore, that the man who 

 raises cattle is the one who is primarly interested in baby beef 

 production. No one familiar with the facts doubts for a moment 

 that if the feeder had to raise his own cattle or to pay for the two 

 or three-year-old steer on the basis of what it has cost to produce 



