404 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



The show business or pure-bred business is somewhat different 

 from the beef-production business in general, and yet ' they are closely 

 associated, because the most of the pure-bred herds are owned by the 

 big estanchio managers, and they maintain them for the purpose of 

 providing the bulls that they need upon their ranches to improve their 

 stock, and sell some of the surplus to other dealers. The primary 

 purpose of keeping these pure-bred cattle is to improve their herds, so 

 that they may have better sires to use on these large holdings. We 

 think we have big cattle shows in this country, but so far as the bull 

 shows are concerned, we don't really know what a big show is. They 

 have down there — have had this year — over eight hundred Short-horn 

 bulls entered in their show; and while they had nine rings for bulls, 

 they had in some of^ them as many as 150 entries, and at the close of 

 the show they held a big sale. The breeders hold a larger part of their 

 surplus breeding stock for this show than they do in this country for 

 any of our fairs, and one reason for that is that this show constitutes 

 the great annual live stock event, and it affords the best market that 

 they have for their surplus stock. At the close of the show, nearly 

 all of the prize animals are put through the auction mart; very few of 

 them are reserved; and the breeders and cattle men from all over the 

 country and several other republics down there as well, come at that 

 time for the purpose of buying pure-bred stock that they wish to 

 procure. The result, of course, is that there is very keen competition 

 for the best. This year, when the reserve champion was put into the 

 ring to be sold (the grand champion Short-horn bull being reserved 

 and not offered), the first bid on him was $10,000, the next $25,000, 

 and from that he went up at increases of $1,000 v/ithin just a few min- 

 utes until he was knocked off at $50,000. He was bought by a man 

 who is maintaining a pure-bred herd to raise bulls to improve the stock 

 of his and other ranches. In these values, their dollar represents about 

 42 cents of our money, so you will need to make that discount to get 

 the actual value paid; but even with that discount you can see what 

 prices they paid. In the first afternoon, they sold twenty-five bulls, 

 and they were not the pick or tops of the entire offering, but happened 

 to be the consignment of two men. The average price paid was $9,144, 

 and all of them were bought by these large estanchio owners, and some 

 of them by men without any registered cows on their place, but who 

 maintained large herds of well-bred and practically pure-bred cows 

 for the purpose of raising good sires to improve their stock. Their 

 beef-producing business is on that basis, and, taken together with the 

 fact that they have the ideal climatic and grazing conditions, and that 

 they can depend upon marketing prime beef from their pastures that 

 are well maintained and properly managed every day in the year, with- 

 out feeding a pound of grain, you can readily understand that their 

 beef production business is on a pretty satisfactory basis. In the years 

 to come, the Argentine is the country that is going to be in a position 

 to supply the shortage of beef that other nations require, to a larger 

 extent, undoubtedly, than any other single country. The Argentine is 



