Are 

 You 



STARVING 



Your 



CALVES and yearlings do not do 

 as well in corn-belt feed lots as 

 they did 10-30 years ago. They 

 gain slower because "the quality 

 of the grain is not what it was 20 

 years ago. I definitely think a cow can 

 stand at a corn crib on some corn-belt 

 farms and slowly starve to death." 



These claims highlighted the 21st 

 Cattle Feeders' Day in late October at 

 the Illinois College of Agriculture. The 

 speaker was C. E. Johnson, former 

 Iroquois county, Illinois, farm adviser 

 and cattle feeder who now is growing 

 feeder calves in Colorado. He spoke 

 on "What the Rancher and Corn-Belt 

 Feeder Have in Common." 



More than 1,500 cattle men also 

 heard R. W. Grieser, Chicago Produc- 

 ers' Commission declare that prolonged 

 strikes in steel and coal would hurt fat 

 cattle prices. But when the strikes are 

 settled, the immediate future for well- 

 fed cattle prices will be bright. 



And the importance of low-cost, high- 

 protein pastures in a steer feeding pro- 

 gram was emphasized in reports by R. 

 R. Snapp, head of beef cattle work at 

 the college, and R. J. Webb, superin- 

 tendent of the Dixon Springs Experi- 

 ment Station in southern Illinois. 



A. F. Grandt. agronomist, reported on 

 college tests in pasturing steers on 

 strip-mine "spoil banks" which had 

 been reseeded. and Fred Francis ex- 

 plained the amount of feed needed to 

 finish choice heifer calves to good, 

 choice, and prime carcass finish. 



Johnson called on his audience to "be 

 crusaders in the movement" back to a 

 grassland-livestock type of farming. 



"Soil mining can't go on forever." he 

 asserted, "and you cattle feeders know 

 it. You stockmen are going to have to 

 lead and show the way back to soil 

 building or your entire agriculture is 

 going to suffer. 



"My records as a feeder in Iroquois 

 county. Illinois, disclosed that it took 

 over 14 per cent more corn to put on 

 100 pounds of beef in 1946 than in 

 1936," Johnson declared. "Assume that 

 it took only seven per cent more. A 

 seven per cent decline in 10 years is a 

 lot in terms of the life of a county, state, 

 or nation. That would be 70 per cent 

 in 100 years. 



CATTLE? 



"I bought 40,000 to 60,000 bushels 

 of corn a year. It all came from grain 

 farmers, as livestock men had none to 

 sell. Iroquois county is a surplus grain 

 area. The average farmer does not feed 

 any livestock and so doesn't produce 

 any manure. The same is true of many 

 Illinois counties. True, you use fer- 

 tilizers, a little clover, but in general 

 your luck has about run out on raising 

 quality feeds on 'farmed-out' land. 



"I tried to protect myself by buying 

 corn from limed, phosphated, and clo- 

 vered land. There just wasn't enough 

 corn available from this sort of land. 

 I finally decided I was too old to do 

 anything about it and moved. Truly it 

 was a deciding factor in my leaving 

 Illinois. 



"I may be old-fashioned but, coming 

 back after three years, the thing I notice 

 most is the number of farms that have 

 no livestock. Many farms with no fenc- 

 es can't even care for a milk cow. , All 

 the experimental evidence to the con- 

 trary, no substitute has been found for 

 manure as a soil builder, and soil is 

 basic." 



Johnson claimed that manure was 

 largely responsible for consistent yields 

 of 100 to 125 bushels of corn an acre 

 in northern Colorado and the Arkansas 

 valley. Four tons of alfalfa an acre is 

 common. 



True, they irrigate, Johnson admitted, 

 but their grain is off alfalfa sod that 



has had manure, tons of it to the acre. 

 The grain is high in protein and min- 

 erals. Good feeders are making gains 

 of nearly I iree pounds a day on their 

 cattle, he said. 



In presenting the "Beef Cattle Out- 

 look," Grieser felt that despite the threat 

 of strikes, "we have a very good slaugh- 

 ter cattle market now. and the prospects 

 seem to point to another profitable year 

 for the better-than-average cattle feed- 

 er." 



The veteran Chicago cattle buyer 

 noted that the rate of national income 

 now is high, and general business con- 

 ditions for the coming year are by far 

 the chief factor that will govern cattle 

 prices because the supply will not 

 change much. He said that if the big 

 strikes were settled soon, there would 

 be a good prospect of making a profit 

 this year in short-feeding two-year-old 

 steers and yearling heifers." 



In his report. R. R. Snapp explained 

 one test in which 60 steers made 68 per 

 cent of their 490-pound gain during a 

 1 2-month feeding period on pasture and 

 roughage. 



"Our gains in the 1948-49 feeding 

 trial were the cheapest we've ever been 

 able to make during three tests of this 

 feeding system," Snapp said. "The 

 estimated feed cost per 100 pounds of 

 gain was only $16.55." 



Webb explained the strong and weak 

 points of eight different methods of 

 handling cattle that were tested at 

 Dixon Springs Station. 



Grandt reported that steers gained al- 

 most as well on stripmine "spoil banks" 

 that had been reseeded to legume-grass 

 pasture as similar steers grazing on 

 native bluegrass or improved pasture. 



Francis' report showed that it does 

 not pay to finish heifer calves to any 

 higher carcass finish than their starting 

 live grade, because the cost of*gain is 

 too hiah. 



iwu:)UumitH:>ittKH<itf ^laoc 



Champaign News Gazette 

 Photo 



What the tattle get to 

 eat determines to a 

 great extent the 

 quality of the beef 

 they will deliver over 

 the butcher's counter. 

 This dlllerence was 

 shown In a display at 

 the Cattle feeders' 

 Day program at the 

 University of Illinois 

 College of Agricul- 

 ture. 



I N S 

 C 



I. A. A. RECORD 



