Types and Market Classes of Live Stock 149 



parison of the northern range with the southern range, of the central 

 states with the western states, and of the 14 leading states with the 

 total for the United States. The latter indicates that the 14 states 

 supplied over 275,000 calves to other states in 1919. This assumes 

 that conditions are equally favorable to calf production in the 14 states 

 and in the country as a whole. 



Conditions suitable to beef cattle breeding.^^"The importance of 

 beef cattle in the agriculture of this country rests chiefly upon their 

 ability to convert coarse forage, corn, grass, and other products of the 

 land, either unfit or not wanted for human consumption, into a valuable 

 and much desired food.''^ The raising of beef cattle is extensively 

 practiced on cheap, unimproved lands, especially on the cheap grazing 

 areas of the West. Improved, high-priced lands in the farming areas, 

 particularly in the corn belt, produce feed much more abundantly than 

 the cheap grazing areas, including large quantities of roughage such as 

 corn stalks, hay, and straw, and the larger part of this roughage must 

 be fed to cattle if it is to be used at all. A considerable number of 

 eastern, southern, and corn-belt farms include more or less rough land 

 which may be used to best advantage as pasture for a beef breeding 

 herd. 



Thus breeding herds of beef cattle are maintained not only in the 

 Southwest and West, but also in the Central West, and in the East 

 and South. Steer calves produced in the West are frequently kept 

 there until they are three or four years old to mature them so that 

 they will fatten on grass, because young, growing animals do not 

 fatten on grass alone. On the other hand, steer calves produced in 

 the corn belt must be developed and finished quickly. On high-priced 

 land they cannot be developed profitably by the slower method of the 

 West. In other words, most corn-belt beef calves must be marketed 

 as baby beeves. 



Selection of beef cattle for breeding purposes. — When breeding 

 for beef, the producer must use good cattle of the beef type. Attention 



that conditions are as favorable for production of calves in Texas as in New Mexico 

 (they are probably more favorable), then Texas sold 18 calves per 100 cows, New 

 Mexico 21, South Dakota 3, Missouri 6, Colorado 3, California 14, and Arizona 16; 

 while Iowa purchased 14 calves per 100 cows, Nebraska 4, Montana 1, and Illinois 6. 

 This would mean the sale of about 400,000 calves by Texas, the purchase of about 

 120,000 calves by Iowa, and sales or purchases by the other states in proportion 

 to the figures given. The writer does not believe the above figures relative to corn- 

 belt calf crops to be accurate as applied to some of the corn-belt states, being too 

 high when applied to the state as a whole, but in a broad, general way they indicate 

 the allowances which should be made for differences in numbers of calves dropped 

 and for losses in western as compared to central states. If the corn-belt figures are 

 high, the movement of western calves into corn-belt states was larger than the above 



1 Sheets, Baker, Gibbons, Stine, and Wilcox: Our Beef Supply, U. S. Dept. 

 Agr. Yearbook, 1921, p. 227. 



