158 



have the fuel, those things which we must burn. That is what milk is, 

 bone forming, tissue forming and maintaining, and energy giving. 



Now how can a cow make those things? How can she make lime water 

 out of corn? You would have to feed a ton of corn to get a pound of lime, 

 or she would have to eat a ton of alfalfa to get 150 pounds of lime. So 

 the whole thing resolves itself largely on the appropriate use we make of 

 the cow in her manufacturing work. 



Another animal is the beef animal. We are studying economies this 

 morning, economies of production. Professor Kildee has told you about the 

 economic production of dairy cows. Now we want to know something about 

 the economic production of the beef problem, so Professor Cochel will treat 

 on economies of the beef. Professor Cochel is from the American Short- 

 horn Breeders' Association, Kansas City. 



ECONOMIES IN CATTLE FEEDING. 

 (Prof. W. A. Cochel.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The past year has not been a 

 most favorable one from any standpoint to those who are interested in the 

 production of beef, and especially to those who have bought cattle and 

 finished them for market purposes. It is true that within the last three or 

 four months a few of the cattle bought and handled have been very profitable. 

 There is no need of us attempting to apply what we have learned in the past 

 year and consider that as a standard to go by any more than there is for 

 any other group of people to take the worst year in their history and use 

 that as a means of measuring all the other years that they have to operate. 



I am naturally a little bit of an optimist on the cattle business. I 

 think that we have decidedly better days ahead of us than we have left im- 

 mediately behind, and that this is no time for those of us who have spent 

 our entire lives in the production of beef to consider that the beef business, 

 or the beef industry has entirely gone to pieces. 



There are three or four things which we should consider essential when 

 we discuss the question of cattle feeding, cattle breeding or cattle manage- 

 ment. Those are the functions which cattle are supposed to perform on the 

 farms of this country. The first big job which cattle have on the farms of 

 the United States is to furnish a market for our grass, our pastures. Some 

 of the other crops which we can grow, and do grow, we can market (a por- 

 tion of them at least) in their original form. Those of us who are interested 

 in the production of grass, who own land that we keep in grass and in pas- 

 ture, can find no other market for the grasses that grow naturally on our 

 soils except through live stock. Throughout a large section of the United 

 States we have to depend upon the live stock industry to furnish us a market 

 for the one big crop which we grow. 



One of the things that has been the matter with the corn market during 

 the past year is the fact that there has not been a sufficient amount of live 

 stock produced to furnish the usual market for corn that prevails one year 

 after another throughout the Corn Belt. The same thing is true with the 

 hay market. There is not a sufficient number of breeding cattle, nor of 

 stock cattle in the United States today to consume the hay which we are 

 producing. Week before last I was out on the western slope in Colorado and 

 saw as fine alfalfa hay as I ever saw in my life offered for sale at two dol- 

 lars and a half a ton in the stack. That was in a community where they 

 normally handled about thirty-five thousand head of cattle. This year in 

 that same community they have between fourteen and fifteen thousand, and 

 more feed than they have produced in any one year in the last five. Natural- 

 ly those men are looking forward to increasing their live stock holdings, 

 increasing the number of beef cattle they have on their lands, in order that 

 they may furnish a market at home for the crops that they produce. They 

 realize that it is impossible for them to ship hay out of that community, no 

 matter what the price, because in that particular section they would have 

 to haul it a little over thirty miles before they would get to the first rail- 



