ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IV. 133 



years ago. "We have, in the last few years, heard much about the scar- 

 city of cattle, a decrease in our meat exports, that the production of 

 meats in this country is not keeping pace with the population, and that 

 it would only he a few years until, as a nation, we would be importers 

 of meat, rather than exporters. One has but to travel over the west 

 and study conditions to realize that we are not producing near the 

 number of good cattle that this country is capable of producing. I dare 

 say that Iowa is not producing all the cattle that it would be possible 

 for her to produce, and that she has not made the improvement in her 

 herds in the last twenty years that might have been possible for her to 

 have made. 



"With land worth from $100 to $250 an acre, of course every one will 

 know it is no longer profitable to breed and grow the type of cattle that 

 it takes four or five years to mature. It seems necessary, therefore, that 

 more attention should be given to the types of cattle that we are pro- 

 ducing, to the type of cattle that is demanded in our best markets, and 

 to the most economical methods of producing and maturing them. The 

 man who is keeping on $100-an-acre land no better class of cattle than he 

 kept when land was worth from $25 to $30, is not producing beef at a 

 profit for himself or doing anything for the advancement of cattle in 

 general. It is high time that more attention should be given to the 

 breeding and producing of a better class of beef cattle. The common 

 scrub herds of cows that can be found in almost any state in the central 

 west are not a credit to the state in which they are found, not a credit 

 to the beef cattle interests of the country, and undoubtedly will not give 

 a profitable return to their owners. 



Iowa boasts of having more good, pure-bred stock than any other 

 state in the Union; but it would not be necessary to travel very far in 

 the state to find herds of cows that you would not be proud to say you 

 owned. If you will study the conditions in the range country, and note 

 how fast the large breeding ranges are being broken up, and think that 

 it is only going to be a few years more that you will be able to go to the 

 river markets and buy your feeders, you will more fully realize why 

 special attention should be given to the improvement of your native 

 cattle. We frequently hear it stated that there are better cattle to be 

 found on some of our western ranges today than are found in some of 

 the best farming districts of the country, and this statement is abso- 

 lutely true. The best range owners have culled their herds much closer 

 and use much better sires than a majority of the farmers have done who 

 owned small bunches of cows. 



I visited a ranch in the southwest this fall where there were 1,200 

 cows of breeding age, but I do not believe it would be possible to go 

 through any herds in Iowa and duplicate it outside of your pure-bred 

 herds. For the last seven or eight years two hundred of the poorest 

 cows have been taken out of the herd each year and two hundred of 

 the best heifer calves retained. How many of the herds throughout the 

 central states have received a culling of as large a percentage as this? 



The bulls that have been used in this herd have cost an average of 



