306 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



THE RELATION OF THE BREEDER OF PURE-BRED STOCK TO THE 

 FARMER AND FEEDER. 



H. W. Mumford, Professor of Animal Husbandryi Illinois Agricultural 



College. 



Read before the Kansas Improved Stock Breeders' Association: 



For a long time we have believed that the relationship between the 

 breeder of pure-bred animals to the feeder and market cattle has not been 

 clearly understood. Breeders and feeders as well, have at times seemed 

 to utterly disregard the possibility of mutual helpfulness and even of 

 mutual dependency. The real place of pure-bred animals has frequently 

 been lost sight of, which has led to practices that have not -worked out 

 for the best interests of breeders of pure-bred animals or the men whose 

 rightful sphere of usefulness is producing animals for the block. 



An active demand for good beef, coupled with a scarcity of prime 

 steers, is bound to bring about relatively high prices for prime bulloors 

 on hoof and hook. High prices for market beef-cattle invariably stimu- 

 late prices for pure-bred beef-cattle and as surely great activity in the 

 breeding of the same. Usually the stimulation of this branch of the live 

 stock trade, aided by the ever enthusiastic efforts and aggressive methods 

 of stock-breeders, is, at times, beyond a point warranted by the actual 

 conditions existing in the open market trade. 



Prices of pure-bred cattle at the beginning of such an epoch are at 

 times slow in reaching values fully warranted by the trade, due no doubt 

 to the fact that producers of prime market-cattle and prospective breeders 

 are conservative. Doubtless the lessons learned during recent years of 

 depression in the trade are still fresh in their minds, but as time goes on, 

 pure-bred beef-cattle sell at prices which no more indicate their actual 

 worth to the feeder and farmer than do the prices of champion steers at 

 fat-stock shows represent the actual condition of trade in prime steers. 

 To be sure, we do not all look at these conditions out of the same eyes, 

 nor do we all interpret them in the same way; but I take it that we are all 

 interested in looking at and solving these questions in such a way that 

 ultimately the breeder and feeder shall reap the greatest and most last- 

 ing profits. 



There can be but little doubt that relatively high prices for pure-'jred 

 beef-cattle influences many — I was about to say young and inexperienced 

 men — but I may as well not qualify it and say what is undoubtedly true, 

 that relatively high-prices for pure-bred beef-cattle influence many men 

 to embark in the breeding of pure-bred cattle that have no fitness either 

 by nature, training, or experience for the work and consequently have 

 no business meddling with it. Failure invariably attends those who thus 

 embark in the pure-bred cattle trade. Many of these men fail not alto- 

 gether because they lack experience, but because they are unable to own 

 herds of a size that would warrant them being called breeders. 



