THIRTEENTH ANNUAL- YEAR BOOK— PART IV 145 



it down thoroughly and tramped it down; and nevertheless that 

 second filling" never paid for putting it in, and eight inches spoiled 

 all the way around. 



Professor Evvard : If the men tramped around right at the 

 edge, there must be some other factors working. There are many 

 men here who have used hollow block silos ; perhaps they could give 

 you some information. 



James E, Downing: I would like to ask what is the experience 

 as regards the fill at the market of silage-fed cattle as compared 

 ^vith straight corn-fed? 



Professor Evvard: Some record the experience that silage-fed 

 cattle drink more when they get to market. Some of ours did and 

 some did not. I know that they shrink very little going to market. 

 Some of them went clear to Chicago without a bit of laxativeness. 



The President : The next subject on the program is "Some Prof- 

 itable Yfays to Produce Beef," by Mr. Rex Beresford, beef cattle 

 expert of the Beef Producers' Association. 



PROFITABLE BEEP PRODUCTION. 



Mr. Beresford: Mr. President and Gentlemen — I see that on the program 

 for tomorrow you have Mr. McCroskey, president of the Kansas City Live 

 Stock Exchange, and he is going to talk to you about the prospective feed- 

 er cattle supply. Under these circumstances, I hesitate a good deal about 

 trying to say anything about the prospective feeder cattle supply for the 

 Iowa cattle feeder, although personally I have some pretty strong convic- 

 tions on that subject. In fact, when I started out laboring under this high- 

 sounding, euphonious title that Mr. Sykes announced a while ago, "beef 

 cattle expert for the Iowa Beef Producers' Association," the first thing 

 that happened to me every time I stepped on the cattle feeder's farm was 

 to have these questions fired at me: "Where are we going to get our 

 feeders?" or "How much are we going to have to pay for feeders this next 

 fall," or "How are we going to get cheaper feeders?" or some other 

 phase of this feeder cattle problem. They were fired at me so often 

 that I thought I had better try to get wise, if possible, as to the feeder 

 cattle prospects for Iowa and for the United States. So I got busy and 

 got together all thie statistics as to the beef cattle supply in the various 

 feeder cattle producing states that I could get hold of. Of course, I took 

 Uncle Sam's figures in general; then the census figures; then I wrote 

 to the secretaries of the various boards of agriculture in the states that 

 have been producing beef cattle; and I tried to digest all these figures 

 and com.e to some conclusion. The more figures I got together, the more 

 discouraging the outlook seemed; because when we began to look back on 

 the situation, say about twelve years ago, we had, according to the census 

 figures in 1900, a little better than 50,000,000 head of beef cattle in the 

 United States, a pretty good percentage of which was breeding stock. In 

 10 



