146 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



animals; they don't need steam heat, but they do need ventilation. We 

 must get over the notion that our domesticated animals, and especially 

 our cattle, should be kept in close quarters. You in Iowa are not as great 

 sinners as we in Illinois, and we not as great as they are farther east; 

 but we all of us look forward instinctively to the time when we can build 

 a big barn, paint it red, have a stone basement, and bottle up our cattle. 



Throughout the country the notion exists that an old bull is dangerous 

 and must be gotten rid of. The result is that they are sent to the sham- 

 bles just at the time when selection could be made between those that are 

 valuable and those that are worthless. The great mass of young stuff in 

 the country is gotten by yearling and two-year-old sires. I do not know 

 whether this immature age on the part of the sire is of disadvantage to 

 to the offspring, but, altogether independent of that, it means that the 

 sires are an unselected lot. There is no accurate basis for judgment as to 

 whether a bull is a good one or not until some of his get have reached 

 a fair degree of maturity, and by that time he is at least four or five 

 years old. This is the age at which the best breeders should be used more 

 freely, and yet it is an age at which most of them are consigned to the 

 block. 



Under ordinary farm conditions in this country, the bugaboo of in- 

 breeding, more than any other one thing, stands in the way of the use 

 of mature if not of aged bulls. If this could be removed it would be worth 

 millions to American agriculture. I wish we might have a Divine com- 

 mand touching the point, but in its absence I suppose we shall have to 

 settle down to a campaign of education. 



Stockmen the country over, and especially breeders of cattle, have no 

 adequate market for their breeding stock. For the small producer the 

 cost of selling is very close to all other expenses of production, and this 

 in itself is a tremendous discouragement to the breeding of better live 

 stock, especially cattle. What is certainly needed is some scheme of co- 

 operative selling whereby the individual producer can reach the cattle 

 consumer by methods more direct and cheaper than those yet at his dis- 

 posal. Farmers organized a generation ago for cooperative buying, but in 

 this generation cooperative selling is of infinitely larger importance both 

 with respect to immediate production and the establishment of a perma- 

 nent and finished agriculture. 



The American breeder has been intensely individualistic, almost secret 

 in his methods and ideas. This is narrow and unprofitable. There arc 

 no secrets in breeding. Indeed, successful stock production depends upon 

 the widest publicity and the most accurate and far-reaching knowledge of 

 facts about pedigrees and individual excellencies. We know enough of 

 heredity these days to know that the practical breeding value of sires 

 and dams can be established along the lines of inheritance and individual 

 performance quite independent of that subtle genius of the breeder that 

 has been so much exploited. There is a perfectly adequate basis for co- 

 operative marketing, and John Sherman's method of resumption can be 

 applied directly to this problem. 



Co-operative breeding, which is bound to come, is more difficult than 

 co-operative selling, but the tremendous cost of the highest class of breed- 



