138 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



beef than it does the cheaper sort. If a manufacturer had the 

 choice of making out of the material he was using a grade of shoes, 

 for example, worth $4.00 per pair instead of $2.50 without addi- 

 tional labor or other increase in cost, and requiring only a little 

 closer and more intelligent attention to the finer details of the 

 business, is it not to be supposed that he would make his material 

 into the better grade of shoe? The cases are fairly parallel, and 

 it is our duty to convert our feed and labor into the most valuable 

 and highest priced material possible. 



AFTER THE CALF IS BORN. 



The calf is born with certain tendencies which cannot, so far 

 as we know now, be materially changed, and must be accepted for 

 better or for worse. These relate, among other things, to the size 

 the animal will attain when fully mature, if nourished in the ordi- 

 nary manner ; the length of time required for it to mature ; the form 

 it will have when finished ; the predisposition either to grow rapidly 

 and not fatten until late, or to fatten at almost any stage of its 

 existence that a sufficient amount of food is given to supply the 

 requirements of maintenance, growth, and fat. 



These factors affect vitally the whole financial outcome and 

 are, so far as we now know, controlled by the breeder rather than 

 influenced by the feeder. After the animal is born, therefore, it is 

 practically beyond control in these respects, and it is of the utmost 

 importance that the feeder adapt his methods of feeding and hand- 

 ling to the peculiarities of form, temperament, early maturity, size, 

 quality, etc., of the individuals with which he has to deal. To take 

 an animal for baby beef, for example, that has a tendency to grow 

 rapidly and mature late, would be just as short-sighted as to keep 

 until it is three years old before being put into the feed lot, an 

 animal that has the tendencies toward early maturity very strongly 

 marked, and that is naturally under size, over refined, and wholly 

 unfitted to subsist on the rough feed of the stalk field and straw 

 stack. To take a miscellaneous collection of steers representing 

 all gradations between these two extremes and give them the same 

 treatment and endeavor to finish them at the same time and in the 

 same manner, would be equally wasteful of feed and labor. To 

 state the general proposition differently, to attempt to market an 

 animal at 900 pounds that was designed by its breeding to be 

 finished at 1,500 pounds, or to attempt to make a 1,500 pound steer 

 out of an animal that reaches its highest development at 1,000 

 pounds, is committing a deliberate and palpable blunder. 



