494 FARMEKS' INSTITUTES. 



they cost too much money for my purse." I say you cannot afford not to do 

 it. You cannot afford to breed and feed steers until two years old and sell 

 for $20 or $25 a head, while your neighbor, for the same outlay of labor 

 and feed, gets $40 to $50 each for his. The struggle for existence, compe- 

 tency, wealth, between you and your neighbor, under these circumstances, 

 becomes an unequal one, in which the fittest is sure to survive. This is no 

 fancy sketch, for we have sold from the Crapo farm steers, at two years old, 

 for §55 a head, and took in part payment from the man to whom we sold, a 

 bunch of steers, picked up in this county, of the same age as ours (and the 

 best he could find at the time, for he was a drover from Detroit), at $23 

 each. Our steers had not been housed or stall-fed. They had, however, run 

 with their dams, when calves, until time of weaning in the fall, and they had 

 open sheds, well bedded with straw, to lie under and feed in during stormy 

 days in winter. These steers of ours were Hereford grades, but possibly 

 the same favorable results might be obtained by some other beef breed. This 

 experience is not exceptional with us — we have duplicated it many times in 

 the last twenty-five years, with our Herefords. Did time and space permit, 

 I could give you statistics of our sales, both in our own market, to our local 

 butchers and cattle drovers, and also in Detroit, Buffalo and Albany, which 

 any one curious to know will find published in the report of the Michigan 

 Board of Agriculture for 1878, on page 214, in a paper read by me before the 

 Farmers' Institue, held in this city that winter, entitled " Herefords vs. 

 Shorthorns." 



Unfortunately about that time, or a few years before, the demand from the 

 ranchmen of the West for grade bulls became so great and such high prices 

 prevailed, that we, with the crowd, were tempted to sell our annual crop of 

 calves for the immediate profits then realized; but, in so doing, we aided in 

 inflicting an irreparable injury on the business. From this costly experience 

 every breeder and feeder of beef cattle, irrespective of breed, should learn 

 a profitable lesson. Never breed from a grade sire. Were it not for the 

 cupidity and stupidity of breeders, varying from and ignoring altogether 

 this maxim, we would have today a more healthful and profitable market for 

 our pure-blooded sires, and a very much greater improvement in the ranch 

 cattle of the West. 



Happily, the tide is now turned. Grades for stock purposes and as beef 

 producers are no longer in demand. Only thoroughbreds are now sought 

 after. This is as it should be, and it brings us back once more to the legiti- 

 mate business of breeding and feeding grade steers for the butchers' block. 

 This, by the way, is the final resting place of all cattle, and a large share of 

 the profits in handling any breed must depend on their meat value in the 

 butchers' stall. 



My personal preference is well known to favor the Herefords, as being the 

 best and most profitable beef cattle in the world. I have heretofore given 

 my reasons for this belief in the article already referred to, and although 

 expressed eleven years ago, the interval since then has only strengthened 

 that opinion. I am not here, however, to urge the merits of any particular 

 breed, but to state what I believe to be the true principles that ought to 

 govern, in a general way, the breeding and feeding of cattle for beef. Of 

 course, your selection will be from one of the distinctively beef breeds — 

 Herefords, Shorthorns, Polled Angus or Sussex. These were the leading 

 beef breeds at the recent fat stock show at Chicago, and their positions, or 



