LIVE STOCK BREEDERS. 



203 



Table III. Grain Required to Produce One Pound of Gain — Winter Feeding. 



Comparing the first month of the feeding experiment with the 

 la.st month, we find, as shown in Table II, that the cost of gain is very 

 much less the first month of the feeding period than at any other later 

 time. In the light of these results, the practice of buying half fat cat- 

 tle and finishing them the last two months of the feeding period can- 

 not be considered generally profitable. This, however, will of course 

 depend upon the price at which the animals may be purchased and 

 the price which may be secured for them when finished. 



AGE AND ECONOMY OF GAIN. 



It has been definitely demonstrated in a large number of ex- 

 periments under widely different conditions that the cost of producing 

 a pound of gain is dependent upon the age of the animal. The younger 

 the animal, the less feed is required for a pound of gain. As the 

 animal becomes older, increasing amounts of feed are required to 

 produce a given gain. The influence of age upon the profit from 

 cattle feeding has however unfortunately been complicated with the 

 condition of the annimal. ]Manifestly it is not fair in feeding experi- 

 ments to use the results secured from feeding an animal from birth 

 to three years old to determine the relative cost of producing a pound 

 of gain at each of these periods. The only fair comparison is a com- 

 parison of thin yearlings with thin two year olds and when this com- 

 parison is made, the influence of age is not so marked. However, 

 accepting the results from the experiments already tried, it seems to 

 be true that a pound of gain costs one-half as much on calves up to 

 12 months old as upon two year olds. In this fact we see a very 

 reasonable argument for the production of baby beef. If it is true 

 that we can produce gain much cheaper on young animals, and if 

 at the sametime it is true that these young cattle properly finished 



