132 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Mr. Downing : How many pounds per day can you make on that 

 kind of arrangement? 



]Mr. Murray : I am getting into deep water here. Some of 

 you know Fred Reiser, who worked for me by the month one time, 

 I had a two-year-old steer and a three-year-old steer and a cow that 

 weighed the same notch, and we tried to keep track of those three 

 head of cattle during the winter feeding. We happened to weigh 

 them Sunday morning right after breakfast, before we fed, and 

 they all weighed just the same. We ran them in twenty-eight 

 days later and they still weighed tlie same, having gained 100 

 pounds in four weeks. In four weeks more (it Avas so remarkable 

 that I never forget it) th(y weighs 1 in the same notch again, 100 

 pounds gain. Four weeks after that we put those three animals on 

 the scales all al)out the same time in the morning. The three-year- 

 old had gained eighty pounds, and the cow and two-year-old steer 

 had fallen down 100 pounds each. That seems remarkable, but a 

 man can do that with a drove. I should say two and a half to 

 three pounds a day was a good gain on a large drove of 200 cattle. 

 but I have put on three and a half pounds a day for 100 days on 

 one load of cattle. Tliose cattle were fed from the first of April 

 through ]May and June and were sold before I fed them an ear 

 of corn. That was the year when corn was so high. Those cattle 

 averaged in ninety odd days 350 pounds more than they did when 

 they were fed in the yard. 



Mr. Downing: I would like to ask Mr. Murray, on the line 

 of feeding that he has laid out, what his shrinkage is where he 

 ships to the Chicago market? 



Mr. Murray : The shrinkage depends on the day and how bad 

 they want the cattle. I have gone in there when there were 1-1,000 

 cattle in the yards, and they gobbled up the cattle so fast that they 

 hardly wanted to let them drink. There are other times, when 

 there are 35,000 or 40,000 cattle there, that they will ride up and 

 down on their horses and act as if they wanted to see how much 

 they would shrink before they bid on them. 



Uncle Heniy told us we thought we were getting rich, and 

 that that was equivalent in his mind to our being so. Now we are 

 told that we can grow pork at 3^/2 cents a pound, and we can grow 

 fattened beef at 2 cents a pound. We can sell our hogs for 

 S cents, or nearly so, and our beef for 8 or 9 cents. I begin to 

 think Uncle Henry will have to revise his statement a little. We 

 not only think we are getting rich, but we really are. 



