Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 517 



sheep and the hog with the beef steer will, unless beef maintains a 

 relatively high level, certainly crowd the beef steer off of the 

 map, unless average prices increase. But I am expecting that we 

 shall come to such a level of respectable prices for the finished beef 

 animal that it will be profitable for men who want to produce beef 

 cattle to continue. 



We have come to a poin.t in our animal husbandry operations 

 when we cannot longer afford to feed the corn and the hay and the 

 other products which we produce on our farms to an unimproved 

 animal. If there is one fact that has been more clearly demon- 

 strated than another by the investigations of the experiment sta- 

 tions it is that there is a very great distinction in different animals 

 in their ability to use food and make finished product of it. I think 

 I have used this illustration before and it will perhaps bear repeat- 

 ing. There are some cows that will produce 125 pounds of butter 

 in a year on a given amount of food. There are other cows on the 

 same food that will produce 250 pounds of butter. There are some 

 horses that will eat a bushel of oats and trot a mile in two minutes. 

 There are other horses that will eat the same kind and quality of 

 oats and be hitched to the same sulky and driven by the same driver 

 on the same track and they are doing pretty well if they get around 

 in four minutes. There is no difference in the oats, no difference 

 in the track; it is altogether a difference in the efficiency of the 

 two animal machines. One horse is able to extract the energy 

 which makes it possible to trot a mile in two minutes and the other 

 horse does not possess that ability. 



There are some beef cattle that are fed for a period of six 

 months and then placed on the market that will sell for six cents a 

 pound. There are other beef cattle, fed for the same length of 

 time on precisely the same feed and under the same conditions, that 

 will sell for eight cents a pound. Now, the cattle feeder who in- 

 sists upon feeding good products from a $100-an-acre farm to the 

 six-cent steer when he can just as well feed it to an eight-cent 

 steer is not a modern farmer. He is flying in the face of the cer- 

 tain facts that are demonstrated in common sense and in all the 

 investigations that have been conducted. I do not wish to be mis- 

 understood. There is another factor which is very well understood 

 by us all. If the margin between the buying and selling price is 

 deducted it sometimes makes it profitable for us to handle six-cent 

 cattle. Of course, if you can buy cheap enough and sell high 

 enough any of us can make money feeding cattle, and it makes little 



