802 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



if they must get their living from it all summer. One other ad- 

 vantage is that the best market of the year particularly for 

 common beef cattle is usually at this season. The cattle that 

 have had six weeks of grain feeding before going to pasture 

 will be ready for the butcher a month sooner than those 

 wintered without grain and turned to pasture when they are 

 poor ; and in an experience of many years I have always found 

 the best demand and prices for this class of cattle in May and 

 early June, and I have often seen the price drop a dollar per 

 hundred as soon as grass beef was plenty. 



I have been in correspondence for some years with an Illi- 

 nois cattle feeder, Mr. Samuel Deal, of McLean County, who 

 has fed cattle at a large profit since he adopted the plan of 

 spring and summer feeding. I was led to open a correspond- 

 ence with him from seeing a statement of the gains and profit 

 on a lot of sixty cattle, which he fed in 1878, and accompany- 

 ing it was the statement that for several years he had tried 

 winter feeding and had not found it profitable, and that since 

 he had adopted the plan of spring feeding he had not in a sin- 

 gle instance failed to make a large profit. As this corresponded 

 with my own experience, I have been greatly interested in the 

 reports of his success, which he has kindly furnished me from 

 year to year. It is perhaps not out of place for me to say that 

 though I have never met Mr. Deal, I learn from those ac- 

 quainted with him that he is a man of strict integrity and his 

 statements can be relied on as accurate. Accompanying the 

 statement of the weight, gain, and profit of the different lots of 

 cattle he has fed during the last six years, was the following 

 statement, which he prepared in February, 1883, after an expe- 

 rience of six years in spring feeding: 



Summer Feeding of Cattle. " The majority of farm- 

 ers consider grass sufficient for cattle in summer and confine 

 their grain feeding to the winter months. I have found a large 

 profit from feeding grain in connection with grass, and that each 

 supplemented the other. 



" I find, first, that it takes only half as much corn to fatten 

 an animal when on grass as when fed in winter on dry feed. It 



