FINISHING STOCK FOR MARKET 247 



offered for sale in a partly finished condition. This 

 can have but one meaning, namely, that feeders of 

 experience find that under some conditions it is 

 more profitable to market stock at this stage than 

 to continue feeding for 30 or 60 days longer in 

 order to secure a high finish. It is always true that 

 well-finished animals sell for higher prices than 

 those not well finished. It is not necessarily al- 

 ways true that the highly finished class returns the 

 greatest profit to the man who fed it on account of 

 the difference in the cost of production. A lot of 

 expensive feed is given to put a high finish on the 

 high-priced animals, and it might easily be true 

 that the cost of this feed more than offsets the dif- 

 ference in price. However, it is always desirable 

 to feed cattle or any other class of meat-produc- 

 ing animals until they have a high finish, or 

 " bloom," under all conditions where it can be done 

 at a profit. These conditions are usually found 

 when there is a reasonable margin between the 

 value of feed and the market value of the finished 

 animal. 



In competitions involving the relative merits of 

 fat animals, very frequently the deciding factor will 

 be that one animal or one lot has a higher finish 

 than its nearest competitor. This finish of fattened 

 animals may be likened to quality in breeding 

 animals. It is something that is hard to define, 

 being of a variable nature. Its consideration in- 

 cludes not only the absolute amount of flesh the 

 animal carries, but the manner of its distribution 

 upon the carcass, the quality and the consistency 

 of the meat and the external appearance of the 

 animal. The securing of exactly the right degree 

 of finish, of being able to distinguish the exact 

 stage when the animals are ripe for market and of 



