496 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



upon personal investigations by state statisticians in each state, and upon 

 replies made by feeders themselves to inquiries as to their own opera- 

 tions and neighboring situation. 



Now that estimate of 27 per cent increase covers the corn belt as a 

 whole, including eleven states, five east of the Mississippi river and six 

 west. The situation is quite different in different states. For two states 

 which are comparatively unimportant as feeding states there was an 

 apparent decrease. In the rest of the states there was an apparent in- 

 crease in all of them, which varied from about 50 per cent in Iowa to 25 

 per cent in Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri, and 35 per cent in 

 Illinois. 



Now, as indicated there, we have a number of sources of information 

 on which we undertook to base that estimate. There are certain figures 

 that are available to us, and more and more figures and information of 

 this kind will be available to us in the future. That is, we know the 

 number of head of stocker and feeder cattle that are shipped out of each 

 of forty-three markets, and these cover all the important markets of the 

 country. We know into which states those stocker and feeder cattle go. 

 But of course we don't know exactly the condition of those cattle as they 

 go into those states, nor exactly the use that is being made of them 

 after they have been received there. 



We have more information than we have had before as to the char- 

 acter of the cattle. For example, we know — we have the figures from 

 the Omaha market showing the weights of stocker and feeder cattle that 

 are shipped out of that market into different states in five different 

 weights— 1,000 pounds, 800 to 900 pounds, 700 to 800 pounds, 700 pounds 

 down not including calves, and calves, so we have a pretty good index 

 as to the character of the cattle going out of Omaha. We have the same 

 information from Chicago. We have other sources of information, but 

 not so exact as that, on some of the other markets. 



On the basis of that information, and information that we have re- 

 ceived from feeders themselves in reply to questionnaires, it seems ap- 

 parent that the cattle that are going from the markets this year are 

 heavier than the ones that went out last year, and the estimate based 

 on this information is that it seems that about 30 per cent of the cattle 

 go into feed lots as of December 1, 30 per cent of them weighed 1,000 

 pounds and up, 32 per cent from 750 to 1,000 pounds, 20 per cent less 

 than 750 pounds, but not including calves, and about 18 per cent of 

 calves. 



But while there seem to be more heavy cattle going into feed lots 

 this year, there are also other sources of information that indicate there 

 is probably a larger number of calves that will be fed out and won't go 

 to market until late in the summer and on into the autumn. We also 

 found that, according to the expressed intention of the feeders, 15 per 

 cent of the number of these cattle would be marketed in December, 14 

 per cent in January, 12 per cent in February, 13 per cent in March, 11 

 per cent in April, 16 per cent in May, and 19 per cent some time after 

 June 1. 



That brings me, then, to the problem we are up against in getting 

 enough information as to the intentions of feeders themselves to be able 



