£84 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



that we never attempted to feed anything but wethers. Once in a while 

 we would get a load of yearling wethers, but we never attempted to feed 

 lambs. 



The same tendency is being shown in the production of our breed- 

 ing cattle. We are gradually reducing the age, and that means that 

 we must gradually, or even more rapidly, change our methods of feed- 

 ing, because of the fact that we cannot profitably produce a young growing 

 animal and get it fat with the same sort of treatment and care that we 

 could the more mature animal. It means that the man who changes his 

 methods and prepares to meet the new situation is going to stay in the 

 cattle "business the longest, and the man who stands up and states that 

 he is going to continue the same method that he has always practiced in 

 the production of beef will be the man who will of necessity have to drop 

 out in the future, unless he has a tremendous bank account to back 

 him up. 



There is one thing in this connection that I have often stated — and 

 I think it is pretty much of a fact — namely, that the handling of cattle 

 is not always based upon judgment. A man goes into the cattle in- 

 dustry. He likes to increase his operations; he wants to stay in that 

 particular industry. The cattlemen are the most optimistic, at the time 

 they put in their cattle, of any group of men that I have ever seen, and 

 it almost becomes a disease in the feeding of cattle from one year to 

 another— they carry it thru life. That means that frequently they will 

 stock up with cattle at a time when their better judgment indicates that 

 it might be a good time to stay out of the business. But in the end we 

 find that our cattle furnish us a market for the feeds which we have 

 produced on our farms, and thru a series of years they furnish us the 

 best market that we can get for the feeds that we grow on the average 

 farm in the grass and corn belt of the country, and that means that, as a 

 general rule, the losses in bad seasons do not quite overbalance the 

 profits in the good seasons, which keep a man encouraged and going thru- 

 out the entire span of his existence. 



The most dangerous situation which we have to confront in our coun- 

 try is years of inordinate profits. More of our cattlemen in Kansas have 

 gone broke because of prosperity than for any other reason. We ilnd, 

 for instance, that once in a great while we will have a season when we 

 will clean up from $20 to $30 per head in grazing our cattle thru the 

 grazing season; and the next year every man who has had that sort of- 

 experience wants to double his profits, and he takes a loss on two or three 

 times as many as he had formerly taken a profit on, which means that 

 thru a series of years that man goes out of business. But our most suc- 

 cessful farmers— and I think this will apply to the farmers of Missouri 

 Iowa, Kansas, or any other state — are the men who have gone into the 

 cattle business conservatively; who have limited the number of cattle 

 they handle to approximately the amount of feed that they produce on 

 their farms, and have continued to handle approximately the same number 

 of cattle one year with another, and in that way have furnished them- 

 selves with the very best iTOSsible outlet for the feed they have produced. 



