railroad. Some are driven from the state and some are shipped over 

 other lines, also many of the cars shipped in early fall contained 250 

 to 300 head, making a total of perhaps 1,500,000 head for the year 

 taken from the state direct to market or to feed lots in other states. 

 In past years the greater portion of this great band has been shipped 

 direct from grass and a comparatively unimportant per cent has an- 

 nually received grain and been sold for grain-fed prices. 



Our farms produce an excellent quality and very large yields 

 of small grains, well-adapted for feeding lambs for market, and, we 

 have no local market for thousands of carloads of the finest quality 

 of alfalfa hay, yet we have been shipping our lambs to market as 

 grass-fed, or to distant feedlots to be finished on grains as high priced 

 as our own and on hay that costs from one-half more to four times 

 as much as it may be secured for in Idaho. Not only does the feeder 

 of Colorado, Nebraska, and as far east as Michigan, use the Idaho 

 lambs as a medium for marketing the grain products of his farm, 

 while our farmers are in many cases shipping bulky fodders and grains 

 at high freight rates and low prices, and in addition the foreign feeder 

 has left the lamb manure which is a considerable item is securing heavy 

 crop yields and an important factor in keeping up soil fertility. 



During the last two years alfalfa hay in the large alfalfa grow- 

 ing sections of the state has had a farm value of from $3 to $5 per 

 ton. In the Idaho experiments of 1910-11, with the lambs shipped under 

 unfortunate conditions, the hay brought $3 and almost the entire 

 fertilizing value of both hay and grain fed was left in the feedlot for 

 use on the farm. This was an unfortunate year, however, for feed- 

 ers everywhere. It is estimated that the professional feeders of Nor- 

 thern Colorado, who annually feed six hundred thousand to one mil- 

 lion lambs, and who as individuals have an experience of from three 

 to twenty years in the business, lost that year an average of $1 for 

 each lamb fed. The same year the lambs fed by the Purdue Experi- 

 ment Station of Indiana caused a loss to the Station varying from 

 $0.31 to $1.56 per hundredweight in the different lots fed. 



In the Idaho feeding work of 1912-13, the hay disposed of through 

 the lambs brought $8.73 per ton by a strict method of charging all 

 expenses to the feeding operations; and as much as $11.17 per ton 

 by considering the water supply as belonging to the farm and all labor 

 charges as offset by value of the manure. Some feeders in the southern 

 part of the state, who kept records and who fed largely on hay with 

 a short grain feeding period for finishing, claim $20 to $25 per ton 

 for hay disposed of through the lambs. 



We need to feed our own lambs in Idaho because, at present we 

 are shipping the raw product and permitting another to secure the 

 finishing profit. Furthermore, we need to build up a lamb feeding 

 industry to furnish us a farm market for our small grains and cheap 

 legume hays. Finally, we need to retain on the farm by lamb or 



