SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 607 



fairly good quality, and in weight tliey varied from 600 pounds to a ton, 

 but the bulk weighed less than 1,000 pounds. The range has the best 

 breeding material at present; but will it continue to breed good cattle? 

 I fear not. Conditions are changing in the range country; the land is 

 more and more settled; the settler will raise cattle and will care for 

 them better than the big outfits can do; but will he be willing or able 

 to keep registered bulls? Let us hope so for his own sake and for those 

 of us feeders who have to buy our cattle; but where it is pi-acticable 

 we should raise our own cattle, at least partly so. If we all depend on 

 the range for feeders and many rangemen quit breeding we may be in 

 the same trouble before long where sheep feeders are now. We keep 

 a herd of over 70 head of cows and heifers just to raise beef calves 

 and men often ask me how we can afford to keep cows to raise calves, and 

 if it is not easier and cheaper to buy them. Well, yes; it is easier 

 to buy them; but my, how I would miss the joy of going out on a nice 

 May morning and finding three or four new white-faced babies from our 

 best heifers looking at me in wonder, or to find a set of twins, and what 

 satisfaction there is to see the calves develop just as expected, because 

 of their breeding; and as to buying calves cheaper, no, I can not, because 

 the cows are fed on feed which would mostly go to waste if we should 

 feed only calves and bu.y them all, and how we would miss the manure, 

 which these cows make in winter while they eat the threshed hay, straw 

 and corn fodder for which we would have no market otherwise; and this 

 manure If spread on meadow and pasture with a manure spreader will 

 double the yield of the crop of grass. I feel most certain that we can 

 not afford to feed calves unless we keep cows to raise them and consume 

 such feed as is not best for calves. 



I was much interested in the timely inquiry of Gov. Packard in your 

 issue of Aug. 9 and your answer thereto, more so as I had a load of nice 

 little Hereford cattle on the market that day, short twos weighing about 

 1,200 pounds. I sold early and well, and after seeing them over the 

 scales I started out to see what was the matter with the trade in baby 

 beef. The first load of that class I saw were Shorthorn heifers weigh- 

 ing 750 pounds and selling at $5; next a load of well-bred Hereford steers 

 weighing 850 pounds at $5.25; then a load of steers of no particular 

 breeding but fat, at $4.65, and weighing around 750 pounds, and some 

 odds and ends at various prices. I was well satisfied that this young 

 stuff sold for fully as much money in comparison with older cattle as 

 anything on the market and made a quick sale. The heifers at $5 were 

 well-bred and very fleshy and sold at top of their class; the little Here- 

 fords, w^hile nice, would have been better with two months' longer feed- 

 ing, but sold better than older cattle in the same flesh and they would 

 likely have brought 50 cents more per 100 pounds in two months and 

 '.A'ould have weighed 150 pounds heavier; and where they did not quite 

 bring $45 then, they would likely have made $60 in a short while. On 

 the other hand there was that load of indifferent breeding; they were fat 

 but should not have been fed for baby beef. They evidently had a lot 

 of good feed and good care, and it seemed a pity that so much care and 

 feed should have been wasted, for they sold for less than $35, whereas 



