FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART I. 15 



dred days; you look at them in the yard and you would think 

 they were prime animals; they ought to be worth $1.50 more. 

 I do not believe it pays a man who sells his steers for S7.50 to 

 feed them a year on fifty and sixty cent corn. 



Mr. Martin: I am not a feeder myself, yet I am engaged in 

 it and have been for fifteen years. My experience on two loads 

 of cattle this past season is this : The corn was pretty high ; I 

 had two loads of cattle and only put one in the yards. We 

 fed them until the first of December. The other load we turned 

 out into blue grass pasture until the first of October and put it 

 in the lot and fed it a little corn up to the first of December. I 

 got 81 a head more for my short feed than I did for the long 

 feed. Counting the price of corn, my experience is, short fed 

 cattle paid best this year. 



Mr. St; John: I am not from Missouri, but from northern 

 Iowa ; yet 1 will have to be shown in regard to one statement Mr. 

 Ames makes, and that is, why it is that he can not select a good 

 grade of feed steers in Iowa at this date, as well as he could fif- 

 teen years ago, when we people who are trying to raise and 

 have been raising fine stock from the different herds all 

 over the State of Iowa, and with the reputation this State has 

 for fine stock. I can not understand that part of his argument. 

 I confess, in northern Iowa it is much the reverse as to the se- 

 lection of feeders, and it does seem to me that Iowa is deserving 

 a little better record than that in the way of feeding steers. 



Mr. Ames: In reply to Mr. St. John's statement, I desire to 

 say, that I ought to have qualified my statement and said, in 

 my locality. I want to go still further and say there are locali- 

 ties where they are using better bred steers. I will repeat, that 

 in many locations, where these men who own their own farms 

 have gone to town and depend on the man who pays as high as 

 S4.50 an acre for these farms, you will find cheaper class of 

 cattle. I will also say that my experience has been, that selling 

 on the range to the northwest has been bettering rather the last 

 few years; there has been a gradual change and more of a de- 

 mand for our home product. But before that, my buyers came 

 from North and South Dakota, and some of them from north- 

 western Iowa. 



Mr. Trigg : Isn't the creamery everlastingly at war with the 

 beef? 



