66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



to be so. England and Holland are two countries, both using 

 considerable amounts of meat, both meat-importing, and both 

 producing beef in sufficient amounts to make it an important 

 part of the income of the rural population. The English 

 farmer produces a few steers or a few wethers as a part of his 

 general farm plan, and not, in most cases, as a special industry 

 to which he devotes his whole attention; and it seems to me 

 that if this same idea could be carried out among our New 

 England farmers it would result in a notable increase in the 

 meat output. The means of doing this I have not the time to 

 discuss in very great detail, but I would like to call your at- 

 tention to a few features of the matter. In the first place, 

 I do not believe that beef production in New England is going 

 to take the form of keeping a cow to grow a steer that shall 

 be kept until he is two and a half years old, and then fed for 

 ninety to one hundred and twenty days on clear corn the 

 whole time; neither do I believe that the New England farmer 

 is going to produce beef by crowding a calf with all the milk 

 it can consume for six months, and then with a rich diet of 

 heavy, concentrated food for nine months, in order to make 

 the so-called "baby beef." Profitable beef production in the 

 United States, and particularly in New England, must get 

 away from the idea that unlimited consumption of highly 

 concentrated food is necessary; and then we shall produce 

 beef in the future, perhaps not of the superlative quality we 

 have demanded in the past, but still of good, succulent quality, 

 able to nourish any man, very largely from coarse forage in 

 the form of silage and grass. Several of our western experi- 

 ment stations, notably the one at Purdue University, have been 

 working on the question of beef production through the con- 

 sumption of silage. Silage has revolutionized the dairy in- 

 dustry in the northeastern States, and I venture to predict 

 that it will have a similar effect on meat production. As a 

 matter of fact, meat production for the New England farmer 

 seems to hinge very largely on his capacity to produce more 

 grass or more corn silage or both. 



Another feature that we cannot lose sight of — and it is 

 perhaps somewhat heretical to mention this — is the question 

 of combining dairy and beef production. In the countries I 



