TYPES AND MARKET CLASSES OF LIVE STOCK 87 



before consigning it to the butcher. Cattle were grown and 

 fattened cheaply in those days, and the advantages of young, 

 quick-maturing, highly-finished cattle were not so marked, nor 

 was a good price offered for any except matured beeves. Stock- 

 men at Albany, N. Y., offered $1,000 to anyone who would 

 deliver a bullock weighing 4,000 pounds. Prior to 1856, two 

 Illinois cattlemen fed one hundred head of high-grade Short- 

 horn steers and marketed them at an average weight of 1,965 

 pounds. About the same time, another feeder collected a lot 

 of one hundred grade steers and fed them to the enormous 

 average of 2,377 pounds as four-year-olds. These feats are said 

 to have widely advertised the Shorthorn as a beef-making breed, 

 the paramount consideration of cattle feeders at that time being 

 the attainment of great weight and immense bulk. 



Fat-stock shows are, in most respects, criterions of market 

 demands in cattle. The champions of early days were big, 

 matured steers. In 1891, the Chicago Fat Stock Show elimi- 

 nated classes for three-year-old cattle; that date marked the 

 turning point toward what has since become known as "baby 

 beef." In 1918 the International Live Stock Exposition at 

 Chicago abolished the class for two-year-old steers. The ten- 

 dency is more and more toward the finishing of younger, quicker- 

 maturing animals. The changes that are being wrought are not 

 plainly evident unless comparisons are made extending over a 

 period of years, or unless the operations of some of the more 

 progressive feeders have been followed during recent times. 



Breeders and feeders now put much stress on quickness 

 of maturity. This they have secured by selecting short-legged, 

 blocky, compact animals, which type reaches maturity much 

 more rapidly than the long-legged, more rangy type, popular 

 in the early days. Some sacrifice has been made of size and 

 weight in order to produce a type that will make beef quickly, 

 yet the better breeders are careful to maintain a proper degree 

 of size along with the low-set, blocky type of body. The change 

 has been vastly beneficial to the breeder, feeder, butcher, and 

 ultimate consumer. 



Baby beef are choice and prime fat cattle, between 12 and 

 20 months of age, weighing 800 to 1000 pounds. .Yearlings 

 make 25 to 50 per cent, more meat for the grain consumed than 

 the same animals would make if kept until two or three years 

 of age. The small, compact carcasses cut up with less waste, 

 and furnish thick, light steaks such as are most in demand, be- 



