EEPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTEY. 411 



There are many farms on which cattle-rearing is the leading feat- 

 ure. On these the rule is to allow the calves to suckle the cows, 

 often allowing them to run together in the pastures during the sum- 

 mer and early autumn months, weaning the calves when they are 

 six or seven months old. This is the almost universal custom on 

 the great ranches, except that on these the cows are often allowed to 

 suckle the calves as long as they will. After weaning, the calves, 

 in the great grain-growing regions, are liberally fed, most commonly 

 with shelled corn and oats, with hay, straw, and corn fodder during 

 the winter ; the bull calves, of course, being castrated at the time of 

 weaning or before. As yearlings the cattle are usually simply al- 

 lowed the range of good pastures, without grain, although the prac- 

 tice of summer grain feeding is becoming more common. It is still 

 the rule that the young steers are kept through the second winter as 

 cheaply as is consistent with maintaining fair condition, allowing 

 them to run in the fields from which the corn has been husked, giv- 

 ing them straw or corn fodder and some hay and grain. In the more 

 southern portion of the region in question much is made of winter 

 pasturage. It frequently happens that the cattle can get most of 

 their food throughout the winter from pastures which have been 

 kept in reserve for them. In the more northern regions less reli- 

 ance can be had on winter pasturage, and more attention is given to 

 sheltering the cattle by means of sheds, etc. Even in States in 

 which the weather is at times quite cold, only a small proportion of 

 the steers are kept in stables. Shelter belts of trees planted for the 

 purpose, or bits of natural forest, are frequented by the cattle dur- 

 ing storms. Where the numbers are smaller they are allowed to 

 have free access to stacks of straw, utilized both for food and shel- 

 ter. 



Not infrequently the steers are again allowed to get their food from 

 the pastures alone, but an increasing number of steers is now fat- 

 tened when they are two years old. If this is purposed, many good 

 cattlemen will begin liberal grain feeding in the late winter, con- 

 tinuing this after the cattle are put on the grass and until a satis- 

 factory price is secured, sometimes giving practically all the grain 

 the steers will eat for a year or more. The chief rood is Indian 

 corn, either in the ear or shelled, fed in troughs in the pastures or in 

 the yards in winter. It is a common practice, however, in winter, 

 to feed the stalks with the ears, either in large racks made for the 

 purpose, or, wasteful as the practice seems, scattering the bundles 

 of stalks over the fields. The grain uneaten by the cattle and that 

 which passes through them undigested is gathered and readily eaten 

 by hogs, which are allowed to follow the cattle. A few years since 

 it was a more familiar sight than now, on the prairies of Illinois or 

 Iowa, to find droves of a hundred or more fine beeves in large grass 

 fields, scattered over which would be seen large troughs into which 

 there would be daily thrown wagon loads of ear corn, or, in the 

 winter, great loads of "shocked corn," with about an equal number 

 of hogs, fattening without any direct attention. 



In 1888 there died, at his home in central Illinois, Mr. John Gil- 

 lette, the most notable producer of fine beef cattle, on a large scale, 

 in the United States. He had- accumulated by his own exertions a 

 tract of land nearly 20,000 acres in extent, on which there could be 

 found two or three thousand cattle of all ages. He kept several 

 hundred high-grade Shorthorn cows, rearing the calves, and annu- 

 ally buying hundreds of steers. Within the last ten years he had 



