COST OF RAISING BEEF CATTLE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. 



By E. G. Ritzman. 



The fall of 1917 found New Hampshire farmers with their 

 barns pretty well filled with hay. This included not only the 

 1917 crop but also in many instances a considerable amount 

 left over from the preceding year. Hay values were compara- 

 tively low at that time, grades of stock hay in the barn ranging 

 all the way from $6 to SI 6, depending on the quality and distance 

 or accessibility to railroads or markets. Hay was not easy to 

 dispose of so as to leave a fair margin of profit and many farmers 

 began to figure how they could put it to good use in other ways. 



The advisability of turning this hay into beef again came into 

 the foreground somewhat as a possible solution to the problem. 

 This question has long been the subject of much controversy 

 but of little experimentation so that accurate and definite results 

 applicable to some of our varied New England conditions have 

 been notably lacking. 



The results of an experiment by the New Hampshire Experi- 

 ment Station in wintering a small bunch of beef calves with the 

 primary object of utilizing an inferior grade of stock hay during 

 the winter of 1917 to 1918 is here given. 



These animals included ten head of Hereford steer calves 

 brought to New Hampshire from Texas. They were a part of 

 several car-loads distributed among farmers to be used with a 

 similar object in view. They were all dropped the spring pre- 

 ceding and ranged between seven and nine months of age. The 

 average weight per head of these ten calves at the beginning of 

 the experiment, December 1, 1917, was 343 pounds. Of course 

 it was obvious that animals of such immature age would not 

 make a normal growth on a ration consisting solely of roughage 

 such as is furnished by average grades of stock hay for lack of 

 sufficient nitrogen contained in the amount of dry matter that 

 they could handle. It was assumed, therefore, that the most 

 economic ration would include all the native hay they would eat 



