THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 



415 



color of the lean meat in both the fat 

 and prime steers was perfect, while that 

 of the baby beef was somewhat lighter, 

 but considerably darker than that of 

 Veal. The color of the meat from the 

 canner was very dark red. An elaborate 

 cooking test was made of these different 

 kinds of beef. In the boiling piece the 

 baby beef was considered tender, but 

 strangely enough the baby beef was pro- 

 nounced tough in the broiling and roast- 

 ing pieces. The fat steer received the 

 largest number of votes for being ten- 

 der in the broiling and roasting pieces, 

 but stood lowest in the boiling pieces. 



With regard to the effect of roasting 

 these different kinds of meat, that of the 

 fat steer lost 43.7 per cent in the 

 process, the prime steer 52.8 per cent 

 and baby beef 47 per cent. 



It should be remembered that the 

 standpoints from which the breeder, 

 feeder, butcher and consumer look at 

 beef are quite different. The breeder 

 is likely to be occupied with the desire 

 to produce an animal true to the type 

 of the breed and showing no evidence 

 of impurity. He should not loose sight 

 of the fact, however, that the beef ani- 

 mal is to be judged on the basis of qual- 

 ity rather than of breed standards. The 

 feeder may occasionally make the mis- 

 take of selling his animals a little too 

 soon in a desire to make the operation 

 of feeding as profitable as possible. The 

 butcher, as has been shown by Otis and 

 others, buys beef animals for the amount 

 of lean meat which he is able to obtain, 

 especially from the high priced cuts; 

 naturally he wants just as little waste as 

 possible and must cater to the desires 

 of the consumer. In other words, the 

 consumer dictates to the butcher, the 

 butcher to the feeder and the feeder in 

 turn to the breeder. At present there 

 seems to be a tendency to demand more 

 lean and less fat, but numerous cooking 

 tests have shown that there must be 

 enough fat on the outside of the va- 

 rious cuts and distributed through the 

 fibers of the meat to make the meat 

 tender and well flavored when cooked. 



Market grades as related to their 

 fattening qualities — From the experi- 

 ments of Mumford in Illinois, it ap- 

 pears that more rapid and larger gains 

 may be secured on good than on com- 

 mon grades. The better the grade of 

 cattle the higher the percentage of 

 dressed beef obtained. Low grade cat- 

 tle carrv relatively larger percentages of 



internal fat; while in high grade cat- 

 tle the fat is better distributed, so as to 

 add to the value of the meat. In gen- 

 eral it may be stated that the greater the 

 cost of the feed, the greater is the ad- 

 vantage in favor of better grades of 

 beef animals. In feeding high grade 

 beef cattle there is opportunity for much 

 greater profit and also for greater loss, 

 if the operation is carelessly done. The 

 factors upon which the relative profits 

 depend are the grade and cost of the cat- 

 tle, price of feeds, weight of the cattle 

 at the beginning of the feeding period 

 and length of the feeding period. 



In a comparison of scrubs and grade 

 steers in Florida, it was found that the 

 gain per day and the total profit was 

 higher with the grades than with the 

 scrub steers. The percentage of profit 

 however, was higher with the scrubs 

 steers, for the reason that their initial 

 cost was very low. Grade steers were 

 also compared with scrubs, in Missis- 

 sippi, in an experiment by Hutchinson 

 and Lloyd. The results obtained in 

 this experiment indicate that it is de- 

 sirable to use pure beef breed sires in 

 the southern states, but that skill in 

 feeding is perhaps of more importance 

 than the sires. The dressed weight in 

 the Mississippi test was 60 per cent with 

 the scrub steers and 60.4 per cent with 

 the grades; the scrubs made about as 

 good gains as the grades and produced 

 nearly as large an amount of choice 

 cuts. In a test of this matter in Minne- 

 sota, Shaw found that steers of the 

 approved beef type showed no superior 

 capacity of making gains over that of 

 steers of more or less undesirable form, 

 though the same breeding. Neverthe- 

 less, there was more profit in finishing 

 steers of the approved type, for the rea- 

 son that the finished product had a 

 greater value. The higher value of 

 these steers, therefore depends, accord- 

 ing to this experiment, on the superior 

 value of the meat in the carcass rather 

 than on the greater power of the steers 

 to make gains. 



In a series of feeding experiments in 

 Tennessee, Soule and Fain found that 

 satisfactory gains were made when suit- 

 able rations were used, even with native 

 cattle. The gains made by scrubs com- 

 pared very favorably with those made 

 by animals of better quality, but the fat 

 was not deposited in the most valuable 

 cuts of meat, a higher percentage of of- 

 fal was found at the slaughter test and 



