FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 351 



them all I could get them to eat up clean. If corn was high, should give 

 not more than a peck per day. and feed longer. With the full corn 

 ration the middle of August or September first they should be fairly well 

 finished, and weigh from thirteen hundred and fifty to fourteen hundred 

 ])ounds. This would give for the year's feed six hundred to six hundred 

 and fifty pounds per head. 



Now would it pay? I can only say that for a number of years farm- 

 ing operations carried on as above described has satisfied the writer 

 fairly well, particularly in increased productiveness of the land, having 

 fed from one to twelve cars per annum covering a period of thirty years 

 in central Iowa. 



The best answer I ever heard as to "pay for feeding" was given by 

 an English gentleman in relating the experience of a younger brother 

 who had been provided for by the purchase of a commission in the army 

 in connection with the commissary department. He sold his commission, 

 returned home and began farming. His army training made him very 

 methodical in his accounts, so he held each department of the farm to a 

 strict account. He found that, though the farm as a whole paid, the 

 largest profit was in wheat and smallest in the feeding operations, so 

 the feeding operations were given up, and more grasses plowed up. For 

 a year or two all was well, but the first bad season showed less profit, 

 and for a series of years each season showed less profit. When he agam 

 took up feeding he found the general profits of the business to increase. 

 So I think it is largely with cattle feeding; it is hard to take the price of 

 corn, pasture and what you pay for feeders, put them together and show 

 a profit, but judiciously managed, most of the feed being grown on the 

 farm, taking a series of years, will be found profitable and worthy of 

 attention, as is proven by the success of many farmers in central Iowa. 



THE TAIL OF THE STEER. 



Breeders' Gazette. 



"Say, 'Feed-Box," I never t'old you how I came to buy that other 

 eighty for Steve, did I?" It was in the late summer or early fall, when 

 for weeks the wind had blown unceasingly from the southwest. The 

 Kansas highways, as straight as the surveyor's chain could run them and 

 Hanked on either hand by the waving, nodding thickets of yellow sun- 

 flowers, were an endless and almost bottomless trail of gray dust. Essen- 

 tially 



"It was the time when breezes blow, 

 When clouds are high up in the air," 



for the horizon seemed unattainable, the sky to extend to heaven itself 

 and the southwest wind never-ending. It was also the season of the rip- 

 ening corn and plans for winter and when men buy calves and steers and 

 talk steer at home, in town, at the neighbors' or on the road between. 



