418 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



A good time to buy is in August or the first of September. The feeder 

 will then get good gains on grass, and do better than when the cattle 

 are bought later and put right into the feed lot. This is especially true 

 of western cattle. 



Last fall cattle began to advance in November, , and many feeders 

 of experience bought cattle in the country cheaper than by going to 

 market. The man who took the time in November and December pur- 

 chased cheap cattle in the country cheaper, that is to say, than in the 

 market. 



It is out of the question to have a market without speculators, be- 

 cause of the days of big runs. But, when buying in market, buy at first 

 hand, the day the cattle come in. Last fall, I bought seventy-one head 

 of feeding cattle, separated them into three pens, fed them hay, and 

 sold them the next day. They showed a gain of 4,680 pounds, and were 

 sold to packers. In 1912, in December, I bought ninety-seven cattle from 

 a speculator. When I first met him., he showed me the weights of the 

 cattle, which had just come in that morning. When we got up to the 

 pens, he saw the cattle w^ere eating and drinking, and were going to weigh 

 more, and he was pretty smooth. He said: 



"Perhaps there are a few steers in there that you would not want, 

 and you can cut them out, and I will weigh the rest of the cattle." 



"Well," I said, "shall I look around a little bit?" 



And he followed me around and made the remark three or four times. 

 So when I came back to where the cattle were, I said: 



"I guess we will not bother with cutting out any; I will just take 

 them all and take your original weight." 



So we got the cattle out, and I sorted them in three bunches, and I 

 had 1,380 pounds more than his weight. We figured up the time that 

 they were in the pens, and it was two hours and fifteen minutes. Those 

 cattle, I think, average about 1,080 pounds each. 



A year ago last fall, October 6, 1915, I bought a load of cattle in Kan- 

 sas City, that averaged about 1,100 pounds each. They were a good-col- 

 ored load of reds, but very plain in quality. I paid $6.35 per cwt. for 

 them, and that would not indicate purebred cattle. The next day, the 

 market was a little better, and I didn't think I wanted to take them 

 home and sell them to my neighbors, and I fed and weighed them and re- 

 sold them to the packers. There were twenty-one head of those cattle, 

 and they gained 620 pounds. 



These figures show that you must be careful in regard to weights in 

 buying cattle in the market, because at these prices it means a big mar- 

 gin. These three illustrations I know are facts. Perhaps someone might 

 question the first statement in regard to those seventy-one cattle, but I 

 can show it to you on the commission firm's books in Omaha. These were 

 big western Nebraska cattle, and were very empty and wild, and when w-e 

 divided them into three pen and fed them well, and they were let alone 

 during the night, they filled some, as the weight shows. The packers re- 

 fused to buy them the day before at the price I gave, but they bought 

 them the next day with the fill. 



