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many men and horses as it would were each stock-raiser to operate alone. Hands can 
be hired at from $15 to $20 per month. The horses employed are range-horse&, and 
they subsist on the grass. They will gather up their cows, calves, and eet, drive 
them to the most convenient ranche, pen them, mark and bran@ the calves, let the 
cows and calves go, but hold the herd of beeves. A “ranche” here is any farm house, 
or even a cabin, on the prairie, with an inclosure used for penning cattle. Stock-raisers 
in Cooke, for instance, will hunt their cattle in Denton, Tarrant, Wise, Montague, and 
Grayson. They gather up, mark and brand, from time to time and turn loose. All 
stock cattle and horses must make their own living on the range. Cattle receive no 
attention from the owner, save that of marking, branding, and gathering for sale. 
Steers are generally thrown upon the market at four years old; but in any lot of 
cattle gathered as beef-cattle you will find more or less from five to seven years old, 
which are always in better condition than the four-year-old ones, and stand driving 
better. Barr n cows are sold at from four years old, upward. Owing to the high 
price of corn, cattle, beyond a very insignificant number, are not fed for the market. 
Those who make it a business drive their cattle to Missouri, or farther north, where 
corn, &¢., can be purchased at comparatively low rates. 
This correspondent states that a leading stock-raiser, who had kept a 
strict record for seven or eight years, found that, in from 600 to 1,000 calves 
annually branded, the difference between the males and the females 
never exceeded twenty. He further reports that Texas cattle are evi- 
dently deteriorating; that they do not attain to the same size at the 
same age they once did, and ‘not nearly so many heifers become mothers 
at two years old as formerly, when the range was much better.” He 
estimates that at present the number of calves found for branding in 
the spring is one-fourth of the number of the whole herd; but ‘some few 
years ago, cattle properly attended to would double their number in 
three years.” The profits, formerly 33 per cent., are now assumed to 
be only 25 per cent. 
A few extracts from other correspondents will afford additional light 
respecting treatment, cost, and profit: . 
Guadalupe: When the calves are a few weeks or months old they are branded and 
turned loose, and perhaps never seen again by the owxer until driven up to be sold or 
butchered, or to secure the calf by branding. No one in our county pretends to herd 
his stock, except when they are brought together to be sent to market. The inerease 
is about all profit, there being almost no expense incurred in feeding or wintering. 
Kaufman: Herding the only cost; profit, about 30 per cent. Liberty, Chambers, and 
Jefferson: Cattle support themselves upon the natural grasses, and the only cate exer- 
cised is by superiutending herdsmen, whose force is doubled in the spring at marking 
and branding time. Stock-men fave lost seriously this winter, and the profit in raising 
is reduced to abont 25 per cent. Travis: In this county catile are permitted to run at 
large on the prairies,and are only collected in herds at the nearest pens at branding 
time. No feeding in winter. Hands are hired at $20 per month to brand and mark. 
Mason: The actual cost of raising, or rather permitting a male calf to raise itself to 
be a “ four-year-old beef,” is literally nothing, except the marking and branding of the 
calf, and the interest on the capital invested in the mother-cow.. The cost of marking 
and branding ranges from 25 to 50 cents per head, never more. Average four-year-old 
beef-cattle are selling here this spring at $12 in coin per head; choice beef-eattle, at 
$18 per head. Austin: The only care heretofore has been the gathering and branding 
of the cattle in spring, also of those cattle that have left their customary range. If done 
by others, it has been the custom to give every fourth calf. The ruling rates for stock- 
cattle the past year were from $5 to $6 specie per head; beeves for the city market, 
$14 specie per head. Atascosa: It costs about one-fourth the gross profit to raise cattle 
for market. Feeding is entirely dependent on the wild grasses. In caring for cattle 
we have to keep bands in the work two-thirds of the year, furnishing, for one thousand 
cattle, about tert horses and two hands at $15 per month, and provided with horses, 
coffee, breadstuff, and salt, but no meat, as they furnish themselves with fat calves. 
The size of herds in this county ranges from 300 to 10,000. Grayson: Heretofore there 
has been no cost attending the raising of cattle, except that of branding and marking; 
that usnally costs the owners of large herds the hire of a few hands for some two or 
three months. There are no cattle fed here except a few milch-cows and work-oxen. 
Good beef-cattle are worth from $15 to $20 per head, and do not cost, I presume, the 
producers more than $1 per head. Milch-cows are worth from $10 to $20 for cow and 
calf, Stock-cattle, cows, and calves, and two-year-olds, will average $5 per head. Onur _ 
butchers are still (February 3) buying cattle from the grass, and we have some for 
beef still on the market. ; 
