328 



Feeds and Feeding. 



the amount of water drank from day to day, but this explanation 

 does not always seem sufficient. It seems more generally due to the 

 irregular movement of the contents of the digestive tract, which 

 movement is influenced by changes in the character and quantity of 

 the food consumed, the exercise or confinement enforced, and the 

 weather. 



V. Value of Breed ik Beef Making. 



Every person with experience in the cattle business knows that 

 "blood tells" in beef production. "Where there is such unanimity 

 of expression the fact must exist, but the reasons given are not al- 

 ways the same, and so are worthy of careful examination. They will 

 be considered in their usual order of advancement. 



513. Amount of feed consumed. — Occasionally the claim is yet 

 advanced that well-bred cattle eat less than natives or scrubs. This 

 opinion is not generally held by owners of pure-bred or high-grade 

 stock, who know that their animals when gaining rapidly are hearty 

 feeders, tho when mature they require only a small amount of prov- 

 ender for maintenance. Nothing in the tables given in this chap- 

 ter warrants the statement that pure-bred or high-grade cattle of the 

 beef breeds are small eaters. 



514. Less feed for a given gain. — The second and more common 

 claim is that beef-bred cattle make better gains on a given amount 

 of feed than do dairy-bred or scrub cattle. Several stations have 

 recorded the comparative gains of the various breeds from a given 

 quantity of feed with the results presented in the table: 



It will be seen that while we can point to cases where the beef-bred 

 steer produced 100 lbs. of gain with less feed than the dairy-bred or 

 native steer, yet the largest amount of feed consumed by any animal 



