486 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



ducing states, the cattle must certainly be grown within their borders. 

 While no doubt some feeder cattle will be purchased from adjoining 

 so.uthern and western states, this supply will be more or less limited. 

 We will take for granted, then, that cattle must be grown on our farms. 

 Such being the case, we must proceed to find the class of cattle which 

 are most profitable, and also the age at which they must be sold. Land 

 valuations have increased very rapidly, and indications are that they 

 will increase for some time to come. The cost of labor is also increasing. 

 Concentrated feed prices, as a rule, are also increasing. 



BEEF PRODUCTION PROFITABLE IN THIS STATE. 



We feel sure that the production of cattle in this state has always 

 been a profitable operation; however, figures have not been gathered in 

 sufficient quantities until two years ago, when the Iowa Beef Cattle 

 Producers' Association, through its agent, gathered data from a number 

 of cattle feeders. His figures showed that cattle were produced at a 

 profit, and that men who were following along fairly scientific lines were 

 very successful. Some few years ago, when land values were lower, 

 cattle could be produced in this state and kept until they were three years 

 of age, and then finished off at a profit. This management of cattle will 

 not prove profitable today. 



BABY BEEF PRODUCTION. 



We have all heard and learned something concerning baby beef pro- 

 duction. Our agricultural colleges and agricultural papers in the central 

 west have been giving explanations of the methods involved, and we 

 are now more sure that they were correct. 



At the recent International, the supremacy of baby beeves was dem- 

 onstrated for the second time by the load of sweepstakes cattle produced 

 on the farms of Messrs. Escher & Ryan. This supremacy was duplicated 

 by every load of yearling cattle that had been well cared for. It was 

 interesting to see the sale prices of the various loads of cattle as com- 

 pared with their weights. We have always known that younger cattle 

 make more economical gains than the older cattle, although we have some- 

 times supposed that they did not gain quite so rapidly. This last sup- 

 position was disproved in a feeding operation carried on at the Walnut 

 Ridge Farm at Whiting, Iowa, in 1912, where calves weighing 475 pounds 

 made an average daily gain for 336 days of 1.97 pounds, as compared with 

 a gain of 1.42 pounds for 259 days on two-year-old cattle weighing at the 

 start 775 pounds. The gains in the case of the calves were as to be ex- 

 pected made on considerably less feed, which means that they were more 

 economical. Cattle that can be marketed before they are eighteen 

 months of age have therefore made the most economical gains and with 

 proper care and feed have made the most money for their grower and 

 feeder. 



The International Live Stock Exposition has always stood as an edu- 

 cator for the beef cattleman. Some of the lessons they should have learned 

 from the performance of the "baby beeves" might be summed up as 

 follows: The finished yearling steer is, as mentioned above, the most 

 profitable for the grower and feeder; second, that good blood is neces- 



