PROOF PILED ON PROOF 775 



purebred herd which was then started at the Mata- 

 dor headquarters were obtained from Fowler & 

 Tod of Maple Hill, Kans., about 1892. About the 

 same time other purebred Hereford and some 

 Shorthorn bulls were purchased in Colorado, Kan- 

 sas and Missouri for the main Matador herd, which 

 consisted mainly of Texas cows. This resort to 

 purebreds proved successful, cattle of good con- 

 formation and first-class quality being obtained. 

 Another interesting fact which developed was that 

 the accepted idea that cattle highly-bred necessarily 

 become improductive was erroneous; no difference 

 whatever was observable in that particular. As an 

 illustration of this, from 100 purebred cows in a 

 pasture where the cattle had nothing but the grass 

 they gathered a calf crop of 99 per cent was one 

 year recorded, and this statement can be verified 

 from the record of the branding in the company's 

 office at Trinidad. 



A Purebred Herd Established. — ^Mr. Mackenzie 

 states that early in his experience in Texas he found 

 that to supply such a large herd of cows as the Mat- 

 adors with a sufficient number of purebred bulls 

 would be a very expensive process, so he adopted 

 the policy of buying purebred cows and holding 

 them on the range for the purpose of breeding at 

 least a part of the bulls required. In this he was 

 successful. He says: 



"If the Hereford cow is supplied with a sufficient 

 amount of grass she will produce a calf as regularly 

 as the cows on Missouri and Iowa pastures, and at 

 four years old the bull is just as large and of as 



