Live Stock Breeders' Association. 



147 



this falls short of the maximum rate of growth of which the animal 

 is capable. Clearly this would vary greatly with different individ- 

 uals, and likewise with the same individual at different periods in 

 its life and in different conditions of flesh. Occasionally we find an 

 animal with the tendency to fatten so marked that it is impossible 

 to maintain a very moderate rate of growth without the deposit 



Fig. 6. The sort of steer that will grow slowly and fatten easily. Such animals 

 have the early maturing quality so highly developed that they lack in thrift and size. 



of fat occurring at the same time. In other words, the two pro- 

 cesses, in this animal at least, are in a sense, inseparable. The other 

 extreme is the very vigorous, growthy, late-maturing animal that 

 will when young, and frequently up to the age of eighteen months, 

 eat to the full limit of its appetite of a concentrated and palatable 

 ration and will gain perhaps as much as two pounds a day for a 

 considerable length of time without showing any material deposi- 

 tion of fat. In this case the upper limit of the growth process is 

 reached in the early life of the animal, at least, without, at the same 

 time, having it overlap the fattening process. 



Between these two extremes stands the average animal as at 

 present developed, which will maintain in its younger life, or say 

 within the first year or year and a half of its life, a rate of growth 

 that will be considerably under the maximum gain in live weight, of 

 which the animal is capable. To feed this animal, then, all it will 

 eat of an ordinary grain ration would require that a considerable 

 portion of the feed consumed be not manufactured into new 

 growth tissue, but be merely stored on the body as fat. 



