364 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



with shows 365 days in the ordinary year and 366 in Leap year. It is readily 

 observable that there is no such thing as "warming-up" or ''short- 

 feeding " calves intended for the buyers of prime " baby beef." 



Another thing to be remembered is that the age cuts little figure with the 

 buyer if the meat and quality are not there with it. Baby beef to sell for 

 paying prices must be a highly finished product. Therefore the man who 

 sells cattle at a young age and before they are finished merely to get them 

 onto the market at so many months old will cut his own financial throat in 

 the transaction. Some one else will get his stufif, put the finish on it and 

 get the profit. Cattle may be sixteen or eighteen months of age and after- 

 wards warmed up a bit, but they will not class as baby beef and they will 

 not bring the price of that article. First, last and all the time, the butcher 

 who is willing to pay the price is after the flesh, the finish and the quality. 

 If he can find it on cattle twenty months old or less he will buy it, but if he 

 can not he will take it on older stufif. 



In making baby beef it should also be taken for granted at the start that 

 any discrimination against heifers in a drove is a waste of money. The 

 buyers will pay just as much for the prime article of heifer beef as for the 

 steer beef in the same load if the grade, the flesh and the finish are equal. 

 Finally, too much emphasis can not be laid on the fact that calves intended 

 for baby beef can not take care of themselves. They can not rough it and 

 make prime yearling beef at one and the same time. They require better 

 housing and roughage than mature cattle but they eat less and make greater 

 returns for what they consume than older animals, and therein the profit 

 lies. They must be well sheltered. It is not necessary to pamper them, 

 but it is far better to err on that side than to utilize the barb-wire system 

 which in olden days was alleged to make young stock tough. 



JUDGING ANGUS CATTLE. 



L. McWhorteVy Mercer County^ Illinois, in Breeders' Gazette. 



There is I believe a disinclination among those who are sometimes called on 

 to act as awarding judges at our cattle shows, to give in print their views 

 on their basis of judgment, even at the request of a popular editor of a 

 popular live stock journal. This feeling is certainly shared by the writer. 

 The reponsibility of making the awards is a heavy one and that of discus- 

 sing it publicly is scarcely less so. In a recent conversation with one of 

 America's leading breeders, whose ability as a judge is recognized on every 

 hand, he frankly said he sometimes found himself in a position where he was 

 satisfied as to the animal entitled to win but could not exactly explain why. 

 There was no question in his mind as to the correctness of his award, but 

 occasionally he found himself unable to justify himself with those at the ring- 

 side. From this we are to assume that an intuition born of years of 

 association with high-class cattle in all conditions and under all circumstances 

 governed his judgment and directed his award. Now if on behalf of the 

 beginners in the breeding business I attempt to portray the basis of 

 judgment that in the mind of the writer should direct the course of the 



