No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AaRICULTUREJ. 3M 



own State has to offer, but the best that the country has to offer, 

 and often the best that foreign breeders have to offer. It prevents 

 a man from settling down into his own locality, and getting into 

 his head that his own particular kind of stock is the very best, better 

 than any other can be. I don't know anything better to overcome 

 this than to have that man take his stock to some place where it 

 will come into competition with first-class stock from other locali- 

 ties; that man will go home with new ideas in liis head, and start 

 in making his system better. 



So the first thing I would advocate in starting in the pure blood 

 business is to see what is the standard, and what the conditions of 

 pure bred stock. Then, when you have decided on the particular 

 kind of livestock breeding in which you want to engage, whether 

 cattle, sheep, or hogs, then find out the particular breed that ap- 

 peals to your taste. I am not here to advocate any particular breed; 

 let the young man find what will suit him, and then study his local- 

 ity. He must have his market in view, how he will dispose of his 

 animals to the best advantage. The market to which he must send 

 these animals must largely determine the breed of livestock in 

 which he wants to engage. The two must work together, the par- 

 ticular breed of the stock, and the character of the market. 



After you have decided on what you are going to have, select a 

 high ideal to work up to. I like to think of the livestock man as a 

 sculptor; he takes the plain material, and out of it he works his 

 ideal; he knows before he starts what he is trying to do. It is 

 hardly possible for him to fully reach that ideal; he always sets it 

 a little higher than he can reach, but the ideal is there all the 

 time. An ideal that is easily reached is too low to be of much value. 

 So, when a man is going into the livestock business, he must have 

 his ideal, and he must purchase his animals with reference to that 

 ideal, and I would say to the young man going into the livestock 

 business, "don't expect too much of the animal at once." Don't 

 undertake it largely until you know what you are doing. Don't im- 

 dertake to invest thousands of dollars until you know you are right. 

 Don't undertake to buy the fabulously high-priced animals until 

 you know they are the right thing for you to have. There are men 

 who can buy animals worth from a thousand to five thousand dollars 

 or more, but it is not, in my opinion, good business for the beginner. 

 He must be sure that he can make the business go, before it war- 

 rants such an expenditure. 



Now, in my opinion, the first thing is to get good, high-class 

 grades of good, pure blood sires. I believe any man should use pure- 

 bred sires if he wants to produce the best results. It is only by fix- 

 ing a high standard, and long breeding along certain lines that we 

 can obtain the best results. It is when the animal becomes a 

 steer, and has shown certain tendencies, towards which we have 

 been breeding a long time, that we can depend on it. When you 

 have the sires that approach your ideal that you can depend on 

 them to produce that line, and when you have a sire that is not 

 pure breed, you can not depend on hira producing progeny that is 

 more than three-fourths like him. The grade progeny may look 

 like some of his ancestors than like him, therefore I would use a 

 pure bred sire in my herd until I could find out what I could expect 

 to accomplish, and then you can begin to invest in something a 



