592 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



CATTLE FEEDING EXPERIENCES. 



By Charles Cessna. 



I was invited a few weeks ago to address this meeting on cattle feed- 

 ing. And I want to say that I consider it some job to talk on that sub- 

 ject before this body of cattlemen. Nevertheless, I will attempt to do 

 the best I can. 



Now, gentlemen, I want to outline my experiences, and I don't know 

 whether it will be in line with the experiences of the rest of you or not. 

 The average cattle feeder spends five or six months of the year growing 

 various crops, and when he gets ready to buy his feeders, after he is 

 through threshing or cutting corn or filling his silo or husking corn, he 

 goes to market to get his cattle. A good many here will bear me out in 

 this assertion that nine out of ten of them spend only one day buying 

 feeding cattle when going to the various markets. He goes with the in- 

 tention of buying one kind of weight or another, and if he doesn't find 

 just what suits him after an hour or two, and it is quitting time, he turns 

 in and buys the next thing he sees. The a,verage man spends from five 

 to fifty thousand dollars in feeding cattle during the past few years, and 

 I don't think he gives the cattle-buying business the time that he should. 

 In fact, I know they don't in our country. 



Now, we find also that during the fall season the cattle market fluc- 

 tuates, especially the feeding market. I have known in extreme cases 

 fluctuations as much as two dollars a week. The man that goes to the 

 market once a year, unless he watches the markets carefully, doesn't 

 get the benefit of that. I can cite several cases during the last year. 

 For instance, I was in Kansas City one week and I bought good cattle 

 weighing 1,050 pounds for 9%c; I bought some other cattle weighing 940 

 pounds at 9%c; I bought some fair Kansas native cattle at $8.40 and 

 $8.50, and the next week I paid $9.25 and $9.50 for the same stock that 

 I had paid $8.40 and $8.50 the week before. The man that goes to the 

 market only one week a year doesn't realize the fluctuations in the 

 market; he doesn't realize that there is as much change in the market 

 as there is, and I think it is due to all of us to give the market atten- 

 tion so that when we get ready to buy cattle we give it consideration 

 and spend more time. We spend five or six months growing the crop 

 and then spend only one day to buy cattle to feed your own feed and 

 frequently a considerable portion of your neighbor's. 



There is another thing we want to bear in mind when we go to mar- 

 ket to buy cattle, and that is that we are dealing with the best talent in 

 the country, and if a man is not posted it's a question whether he buys 

 cattle worth the money or not. 



I found another thing in regard to getting cattle from different terri- 

 tories. For instance, the last two years in our locality we bought a 

 great many cattle that came from Canada, and we found during the warm 

 weather that they don't do very well — they don't make good gains. They 

 were apparently well-bred cattle, but they didn't do well ill warm weather. 

 But they did do very well in the winter months. Another experience 



