REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 47 



IMPROVEMENTS IN BREEDING AND FEEDING. 



The systematic effort to improve domestic animals in the country, 

 which began nearly four years ago under the slogan " Better Sires — 

 Better Stock," continues to grow and is now a project of considerable 

 size and importance. At the close of the fiscal year, 11,533 livestock 

 owners had filed with the department written pledges to the effect 

 that they have placed their farms on a strictly purebred-sire basis 

 and agreed to use good purebred sires exclusively in their breeding 

 operations for all classes of animals kept. 



Results of a questionnaire study on current livestock problems 

 and how farmers are meeting them show briefly that in the ex- 

 perience of nearly 500 livestock owners the general economy of 

 rations, the cost of grains, and more specifically the cost of protein, 

 represent more than half of all feeding difficulties. The question 

 of balancing rations is next most important. Livestock of improved 

 breeding were reported in the great majority of cases as making 

 greater gains or producing more than scrubs or common stock when 

 fed in the same way. The average superiority of improved stock 

 in the use of feeds, as shown by financial returns, was 39.6 per cent 

 over common stock. 



WILD ANIMAL P>ESTS. 



From the beginning the department has maintained that eventually 

 it would be practicable to destroy completely some of the worst ani- 

 mal pests, and thus forever eliminate the heavy losses they have been 

 causing. Through the campaigns against them, prairie dogs have 

 been exterminated on considerable areas, and the large wolves, of 

 which 4,900 have been killed, are being so reduced in numbers that 

 over most, if not all, of the West their end is in sight. 



The best evidence of the growing appreciation of the practical 

 value of campaigns against animal pests in the West was given by 

 the legislatures of 13 States in the winter of 1923, which made total 

 appropriations of about $647,000 for cooperation in the work during 

 the following biennium. 



Improved poison combinations and their systematic distribution 

 have been so successful that poisoning is rapidly superseding other 

 methods of predatory-animal control. The great increase in terri- 

 tory that can be covered by poisoning campaigns, as now conducted, 



