EEPOET OF THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTEY. 405 



CATTLE AND SWINE HEARING AND FEEDING IN THE UNITED 



STATES. 



By Prof. GEORGE E. MORROW. 



For many years rearing and feeding cattle and swine have been 

 important parts of the work of most of the farmers of the United 

 States. There has been a good home and fair foreign demand for 

 these animals or their products. In no other country is the consump- 

 tion of meats so great in proportion to population, and this chiefly 

 of beef and pork rather than of mutton. Milk and butter have also 

 long been used freely, and cheese to a less notable degree. 



As what are now the central Western States were occupied, farmers 

 found in the fertile soils and climate, favorable for the production 

 of forage grasses and cereals, more especially maize, strong induce- 

 ments to give large attention to cattle rearing. In a peculiar sense 

 was this true of the settlers on or near the vast prairies, covered 

 with a luxuriant coat of fairly nutritious grasses, and with a soil not 

 only possessing great stores of readily available plant food, but capa- 

 ble of being brought into cultivation with a minimum of labor and 

 cost. More recently, still more extended areas of lands in the fur- 

 ther West, most of it unsuitable except for grazing purposes, were 

 stocked, within a decade, with millions of cattle. 



The obvious superior fitness of animals and animal products over 

 grains, for transportation to distant markets, has had much influ- 

 ence in more and more widely extending stock farming in most parts 

 of the country. While this branch of agriculture, taken as a whole 

 or considered with reference to either of its divisions the produc- 

 tion of cattle, horses, swine, or sheep has had alternations of great 

 prosperity and of marked depression, it is clearly true that the aver- 

 age profits have been fairly satisfactory, and the business has received 

 the attention of many of the most intelligent and progressive farm- 

 ers of the country. 



The number of domestic animals in the country or the number and 

 distribution of those of any one class can not be given with accuracy. 

 The estimates of the statistician of the national Department of Ag- 

 riculture include only the numbers to be found on the farms and 

 ranches of the country, making no estimates of large numbers kept 

 in cities and villages. 



There are, probably, at the opening of the year 1889, about 50,000,000 

 cattle on the farms and ranches of the country. The official esti- 

 mates give the number on January 1, 1888, as 49,234,777, classified 

 as, milch cows, 14,856,414; oxen and all other cattle, 34,378,363. This 

 showed a total increase of 1,200,944 in the year 1887, as compared 

 with an increase of 2,523,203 in 1886. It is believed the increase in 

 numbers in 1886 was very slight. 



It is exceptional not to find cattle on the average farm in any part 

 of the^ country, and while there are striking differences in the extent 

 to which cattle rearing is pursued in different parts of the country, 

 it is difficult to satisfactorily name those portions most properly to 

 be called cattle-rearing sections. A comparison of numbers by States 

 is misleading, owing to the great difference in the size of the States 

 and the difference in the average value of the animals. Thus, Texas 



