PRINCIPLES OF LIVESTOCK BREEDING. 57 



difference in butterfat production, relative to the size of the animals 

 and their cost of upkeep, is probably not very great. The differences 

 between good and poor strains within each breed are much more 

 important than differences between two breeds. 



QUALITY IN MEAT. 



The world-wide trend toward a falling per capita production of 

 meat and the rising prices relative to other foods make the more 

 economical production of meat a pressing problem. Both better 

 methods of management and the improvement of the native stock 

 by grading are of the greatest importance in this connection. The 

 differences between purebred and scrub stock and the advantages 

 to be expected by the grading up of the latter, however, are often 

 misunderstood. The improvement is not primarily in size or even 

 in the apparent economy of gains. The three most important 

 breeds of beef cattle — Shorthorn, Hereford, and Aberdeen Angus — 

 are indeed of large size, and when crossed with scrub beef cows or 

 with milk cows which are undersized by heredity and not merely 

 stunted by lack of proper feeding, they produce great improvement 

 in this respect. Shorthorn and Hereford bulls have done wonders 

 for the western range cattle in this way as well as in others. The 

 pure breeds of swine and the larger breeds of sheep have also often 

 been used to advantage to increase the size of native stock. There 

 are, however, many large-sized scrubs. 



The Holstein-Friesian cattle probably have the largest bony 

 framework of all the breeds, but are not the best beef cattle. Feeding 

 tests at experiment stations have often shown very little difference 

 in either rate or gain or the cost per pound of gain when purebred 

 or high-grade beef steers were compared with steers of scrub or 

 dairy breeding. Holstein-Friesian steers, as might be expected, 

 have shown up especially well in such tests. Similar results have 

 been obtained in comparing purebred swine with "razorbacks" 

 raised under the same conditions. 



In the tests with cattle, however, the animals of beef type and 

 breeding usually finished out into a class for which the market 

 would pay considerably more than for the finished scrub or dairy 

 steers. The per cent which the dressed weight forms of the live 

 weight depends largely on the degree of fattening, and varies from 

 40 per cent in thin cows to 70 in the most highly finished steers. 

 Under the same conditions steers of beef breeding usually dress out 

 from 1 to 5 per cent more than common or dairy steers. There is 

 also a slight difference in the size of the cuts from different parts of 

 the carcass. Nature tends to develop most flesh in the muscles 

 which do the most work. In the beef breeds of cattle, animals have 

 been selected for breeding in which there was as much flesh as pos- 



