382 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



The men who are producing stockers and feeders can easily stay out 

 of the game for a short period of time, or someone else may absorb the 

 steers which they would normally handle, and feed them in some other 

 section of the country. But the one thing which is notable in regard 

 to the development of the breeding industry is that it necessarily stays 

 with the land thru a long series of years. We can't get into the game 

 of breeding beef cattle and do it profitably, consistently and economically, 

 in less than five years. It takes about five years from the time a man 

 really starts to handle a breeding herd until he begins to market the 

 normal offspring from those cattle; so that any temporary condition 

 which interferes with the maintenance of our breeding herd or with the 

 proposed increase in production for a temporary period has a much 

 greater effect than the immediate one, in that it delays the progress of 

 improvement, or delays the plans of the men who are engaged in the 

 industry for a considerably longer period of time than would be indicated 

 by the temporary conditions. 



We are attempting in our state to solve that to a very large extent 

 by the more complete utilization of other feeds this year than we have 

 ever utilized before. We are cutting up our corn this year to as large an 

 extent as the labor situation will permit us. I think we will find that 

 during the present year we have fed twice as much fodder from the 

 shock in Kansas as we ever fed in a similar period before. We have 

 made a little attempt to use wheat straw, which we have heretofore 

 considered almost a waste product. I would judge that probably one- 

 third of all the straw produced in the state has been burned imme- 

 diately after threshing, but this year it was the exception rather than 

 the rule to find anyone who was wasting any straw, and w'e are using 

 that to winter our breeding herds. 



In other words, we are trying to come down to one fundamental fact, 

 that our beef-breeding herds, our young, growing animals, should to a 

 very large extent be produced on the by-products of the farm rather than 

 the main products, and I don't know but what the lesson which our 

 Kansas cattlemen are learning in the development of their breeding 

 herds or the preservation of them this year will result in a permanent 

 benefit to them in the economical production of beef in the future. We 

 have heretofore considered that alfalfa and corn were the two main 

 sources of food nutrients to be converted into beef. This year we 

 are learning that the by-products of our corn and wheat have a value 

 which we never dreamed of before. We are also building and filling more 

 silos than ever before. We have found that the corn which goes into the 

 silo will carry a tremendous number of breeding animals thru the year 

 as compared with that which is fed in the form of stover. 



That brings up one point that I want to mention this afternoon in 

 the development of a breeding herd of heifers, and that is that eventu- 

 ally the beef cattle industry will be localized in those sections of the 

 country where the by-products of the primary crops which we grow on 

 the farm have the most feeding value. Instead of converting corn into 

 beef, as we have so extravagantly done in the past, we will make a greater 



