594 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



months. If we had done that this year, we would all of us be 

 a lot better off. 



Voice: If we had waited six months, we would be still better 

 off. (Laughter.) 



Mr. Cessna: I bought one load of cattle that weighed 1,193 

 pounds, for Bill Hazard, and they cost $10.60 at Kansas City. 

 He fed those cattle seventy days, and they showed three pounds 

 a day between Kansas City and Chicago. 



Voice: He fed them how long? 



Mr. Cessna : Seventy days. 



Voice: What did he feed? 



Mr. Cessna : Ensilage and corn. 



I have handled cattle many years, most of them out of the 

 stock yards at Kansas City or Sioux City, and some other yards, 

 and I have bought cattle for many feeders, but I have never, to 

 my knowledge, had a complaint. I always buy cattle that I think 

 are of the right kind and weight, because if you buy a steer with 

 a fifty-pound fill in it and then take it home and weigh it and 

 find that it is from fifty to seventy-five pounds short, the feeder 

 thinks that somebody has robbed him. 



There is another matter I want to speak about with regard to 

 shrinkage. You buy a bunch of cattle today, you buy them to 

 speculate on, not just what you want for yourself, and you take 

 those cattle and feed them all the hay they want to eat that night 

 and give them all the water they want to drink, and in spite of 

 that I have had them lose all the way from twenty pounds a 

 head to a gain of fifty-seven pounds a head. That's an illus- 

 tration of the difference between buying them empty or full. If 

 your cattle are empty, you get some weight next day, and if they 

 are full you get shrinkage. 



Voice: I would like to know if these cattle are filled after 

 they are sold? 



Mr. Cessna : I think I can explain that to you. I have bought 

 cattle from speculators in Omaha and other places ; for instance, 

 they might buy them at noon today, and they will say : "Here's a 

 bunch of cattle, and I'll transfer the weight to you at just what I 

 paid for them." The speculator may have had those cattle an 

 hour or two hours — there's one hundred head of them — and they 

 are jammed into a pen and they have no chance to eat or drink. 

 He takes them and cuts them into three or four pens and they 

 line up at the bunker and eat hay, and drink their fill at the 



