FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 363 



comparison with corn, it is better economy to feed three-quarters corn and 

 one-quarter bran, or, if bran is high, seven-eighths corn and one-eighth oil- 

 meal. Should the roughness consist in part of corn stover, timothy or 

 prairie hay somewhat less corn and a little more bran or oilmeal should be 

 used, since such forms of roughness as corn are too starchy. All the rough 

 feed such beeves will take should be supplied. 



The protection during winter may be a shed, open only on the south side, 

 and liberally bedded with straw. With the close of winter a calf under such 

 treatment should weigh eight hundred to nine hundred pounds and be per- 

 haps fat enough to market. It is more profitable, however, to full feed on 

 grass until about July 1st, since cheap grain can be secured during the sum- 

 mer with corn on grass. If some feed like oilmeal, cottonseed-meal, or 

 gluten-feed can be had at a reasonable price it could profitable form ten per 

 cent of the grain ration. This is more necessary when the pasture is timo- 

 thy or prairie grass. 



Baby beeves, fourteen to eighteen months old, weighing from nine hun- 

 dred to eleven hundred pounds, are more profitably handled by packers late 

 in summer than heavy cattle, and are therefore in greater demand. On 

 farms where roughness can be utilized in other ways the production of baby 

 beef is a profitable industry. 



SOMETHING ABOUT BABY BEEF. 



Breeders^ Gazette. 



In the feed-lots of the Corn-belt this winter there are many calves whose 

 owners never fed a calf or beef before. The fact that fat yearlings are 

 preferred by the buyers as a general thing has been pressed home upon 

 feeders of the whole country in a most convincing manner and if predic- 

 tions heard on all bands are to be believed this business is just in the swad- 

 dling clothes of its merest infancy. Therefore a mighty change has come 

 or is coming over the spirit of the average feeder's dream. There are a few 

 things which must be reckoned with in this matter and they must not be lost 

 sight of for a moment. 



Baby beef is not the emanation of a few days' feeding. There is no such 

 thing as ' ' warming-up" or ' ' short-feeding" calves. Again, it is impossi- 

 ble to buy up a lot of calves, no matter where they come from nor how well 

 bred they may be, and then make satisfactory baby beef of them without 

 the most intensive care and most thorough pushing for a considerable period 

 of time. Baby beef or fat yearlings may be said to range in age from four- 

 teen to twenty- two months. When a man sells calves in quantity he tries to 

 get his money out of them when they are from five to six months old. There- 

 fore, at the very best, there is a period from nine to sixteen months in which 

 the finishing process must extend. Nor can calves be roughed through for 

 a while, allowed to lose the milk flesh and then pushed safely along to the 

 same point which they would have reached had they been kept going prop- 

 erly from the start. The making of baby beef is a continuous performance 



