172 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



year of that animal's life. And they found that it required consider- 

 ably less grain to make a pound of gain on the steer 12 to 24 months 

 old than was required to produce a pound of gain on a steer 24 months 

 old and over. 



Then the experiment stations investigated the matter. The ]Michi- 

 gan Experiment Station, the Iowa Experiment Station and one or two 

 other stations undertook what were called in those ancient days 

 "breed experiments." They undertook to test which was the better 

 animal to feed, the Shorthorn, the Hereford, the Aberdeen-Angus, the 

 Galloway, the Holstein or Jersey, and they began with these animals 

 as young as possible, in most of these experiments, beginning with the 

 animal, say a few months old, and they discovered the same thing, 

 that if an animal was fed from birth to death on full feed that the first 

 days — the young days of that animal — were the most profitable days 

 from the standpoint of the amount of feed consumed. They found 

 the same things true with lambs and pigs. The experiments indi- 

 cated that young pigs from fifty to a hundred pounds in weight would 

 make a pound of gain with three or four pounds of grain and that 

 300 pound pigs required five or six pounds of grain to produce the 

 same amount of gain. This has been demonstrated, and some experi- 

 ment station workers and feeders have come to the conclusion from 

 this data that it is more profitable to feed younger animals than older 

 animals, and so we have heard about "baby beef" animals, fed from 

 the time they are born till they are 14 to 18 months old being made 

 to weigh twelve hundred or fourteen hundred pounds and we are 

 told this is the most profitable way to handle cattle, and their conclu- 

 sions are based largely upon these experiments that I have just 

 described. 



One of the most interesting experiments on this subject I have 

 examined in all the work of Experiment Stations is an experiment con- 

 ducted by the Central Experiment Station Farms at Ottawa, Canada. 

 They performed this experiment differently than those mentioned 

 above. They employed calves, yearlings, two-year and three-year old 

 cattle under identical conditions, so far as possible, and fed them on 

 the same rations. The results are certainly very interesting to the 

 man who is engaged in making beef. The average daily gain from 

 these animals tested was as follows: Calves 2.14 pounds, yearlings 

 1.85. two-year olds 1.67 and three-year olds 1.65. The calves gained 

 much more than the others, the yearlings next, the two-year olds next 

 and the three-year olds least of all. 



The cost of the 100 pounds of gain was also very much in favor 



