OUT ON THE RANGE 21 



In some of the very open country of Kansas and Indian Territory, many 

 of the herds during the past two years have suffered a loss of from sixty 

 to eighty per cent., although this was from a variety of causes, including 

 drought as well as severe wuiter weather. Too much rain is quite as bad 

 as too little, especially if it falls after the ist of August, for then, though 

 the growth of grass is very rank and luxuriant, it yet has little strength 

 and does not cure well on the stalk ; and it is only possible to winter 

 cattle at large at all because of the way in which the grass turns into 

 natural hay by this curing on the stalk. 



But scantiness of food, due to overstocking, is the one really great 

 danger to us in the north, who do not have to fear the droughts that 

 occasionally devastate portions of the southern ranges. In a fairly good 

 country, if the feed is plenty, the natural increase of a herd is sure shortly 

 to repair any damage that may be done by an unusually severe winter — 

 unless, indeed, the latter should be one such as occurs but two or three times 

 in a century. When, however, the grass becomes cropped down, then the 

 loss in even an ordinary year is heavy among the weaker animals, and if 

 the winter is at all severe it becomes simply appalling. The snow covers 

 the shorter grass much quicker, and even when there is enough, the 

 cattle, weak and unfit to travel around, have to work hard to get it; their 

 exertions tending to enfeeble them and to render them less able to cope 

 with the exposure and cold. The large patches of brushwood, into which 

 the cattle crowd and which to a small number afford ample shelter and 

 some food, become trodden down and yield neither when the beasts become 

 too plentiful. Again, the grass is, of course, soonest eaten off where there is 

 shelter; and, accordingly, the broken ground to which the animals cling 

 during winter may be grazed bare of vegetation though the open plains, 

 to which only the hardiest will at this season stray, may have plenty ; and 

 insufficiency of food, although not such as actually to starve them, weak- 

 ens them so that they succumb readily to the cold or to one of the 

 numerous accidents to which they are liable — as slipping off an icy 

 butte or getting cast in a frozen washout. The cows in calf are those 

 that suffer most, and so heavy is the loss among these and so light the 

 calf crop that it is yet an open question whether our northern ranges are 

 as a whole fitted for breeding. When the animals get weak they will 

 huddle into some nook or corner and simply stay there till they die. An 

 empty hut, for instance, will often in the spring be found to contain the 

 carcasses of a dozen weak cows or poor steers that have craw'led into it 

 for protection from the cold, and once in have never moved out. 



Overstocking may cause little or no harm for two or three years, but 



