PROGRESSIVE BEEF CATTLE RAISING 



move the beef on hand, and the competition of other 

 meats and foods for the favor of the family pocketbook. 

 Illustrations of factors causing general trends in prices 

 are the seasonal changes in the meat appetite of the 

 buying public, the seasonal variations in receipts, the 

 influence of the export trade, and such unusual occurrences 

 as the recent war. The most important factor of all of these 

 is the ability to sell beef and this is almost perfectly correlated 

 with the volume of beef on hand as related to volume of busi- 

 ness, and is entirely unrelated to the cost of production of 

 the cattle. 



One of the chief factors contributing 

 Seasonal to low prices for the average, feeder is 



Variations the tendency for every cattleman to 



in Price and market his steers in the period Novem- 

 W eight ber to April. The chart facing page 



55 presents a study of the prices of 

 native beef on the Chicago market over a period of twenty 

 years and shows that prices for this class of cattle are above 

 the average of the year from April to mid-October, and be- 

 low the average for the remainder of the year. Of course 

 there have been years in which this was not true, but it 

 represents the average condition over this time. The 

 deviations below the average price for the year are greatest 

 in January, February, June, November and December, 

 while the least occurs in the period July to October. 

 Furthermore, in the November to May period, the 

 monthly average price runs nearer the bottom of the 

 deviations from the average annual price, while in the 

 period May to October, the monthly average runs nearer 

 the top of the deviations from the average annual price. 

 This means that the man who markets in the latter period 

 not only gets better prices for his stock, but that he is 

 much more likely to top the market, simply because the 

 monthly average tends to run nearer there. 



Page Fifty-four 



