EIGHTEENTH ANtJUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII 385 



They have built, up the fertility of their soil, grown more corn and al- 

 falfa per acre, and in that way have been able to obtain the average 

 normal profit thru a series of years. 



To come back to the question of the breeding heifer, there is no doubt 

 but that, as our corn and wheat and hay advance in price, as they have 

 during the past year, there is an incentive given to a large number of 

 men to discontinue the maintenance of breeding herds of beef cattle; 

 that is, when all the factors that enter into their production have in- 

 creased, and the prices of the cattle have not increased proportionately, 

 it means that there is the greatest sort of an incentive given to them 

 to reduce rather than to increase production. But we have this to think 

 about at the present time. In the past, when such a s'ituation has been 

 met, there has always been some other section of the country where 

 cattle could be produced cheaply. But we have gotten up to the point 

 today in the United States where we no longer have any cheap lands 

 in any .section upon which to produce beef cattle. It means that if we 

 go out of the business in one section of the country, we simply reduce 

 the supply to that extent, and that, of course, will eventually mean that 

 those men who are able to stay in the business will reap their profits 

 from the handling of their herds. 



In our experimental work during the past two or three years, we 

 have been working on the problem of the development of breeding cattle. 

 It is customary in the cattle section of the country to breed heifers when 

 they are two years of age, to calve at three. We have been working on 

 the problem of the maintenance of our breeding cattle in such condition 

 that we can add at least one year to their active life of reproducing for 

 market purposes; and by taking a group of heifer calves, feeding them 

 well ths first winter, mating them the spring after they are a year old, 

 and wintering them well the second winter, we can raise very nearly 

 as good a calf from a two-year-old heifer as we formerly have been able 

 to raise from a three-year-old heifer handled under ordinary range and 

 grass conditions. Not only that, but we have found that we have had 

 a larger percentage of the heifers prove to be breeders thru a series of 

 years by handling them that way, and we have found that a larger per- 

 centage ol them become good mothers than has been customary when we 

 have allowed them to go until they were more nearly mature before re- 

 producing. 



But this means, in our section of the country, that they must have 

 better treatment than we have been giving them; we must give them 

 better care during their first and second winters, in order to keep them 

 growing steadily from the time they are born until they finally go to 

 market. In that way we find that the cows which we eliminate from 

 the breeding herd each year will usually pay for the cost of filling up 

 the herd thru the younger stock that we have grown. So we do not have 

 such a tremendous charge to place against our herds as we have formerly- 

 had where we only saved a few calves every four or five years, and every 

 now and then had a lot of canners or shelly cows to eliminate from the 

 breeding herd and to replace with the younger animals. So that, taking 

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