WINTERING FEEDERS 47 



ferent systems of management should undoubtedly be 

 recommended for cattle varying in age and quality. 

 The wintering of calves and yearlings intended for baby 

 beef will be considered in a subsequent chapter. This 

 narrows the subject in hand to the wintering of yearlings, 

 two-year-olds, and older feeding cattle that are to be 

 finished on grass in summer. 



ROUGHING STEERS AN ART 



Experienced cattle feeders will concede that it is one 

 of the fine points of the cattle feeding business to know 

 just how well to winter such cattle. Local conditions 

 as to the extent, nature, and value of pasture lands deter- 

 mine to a large extent what is good practice in any par- 

 ticular instance. Where abundant pasturage of the 

 best quality is available on cheap lands, feeding cattle 

 may very properly be wintered largely on roughage with- 

 out any effort on the part of the cattle feeder to secure 

 large gains. But if pasturage is limited and the value 

 of such pasture lands is great, then some combination 

 of feeds well calculated to produce satisfactory gains 

 should be used. 



The writer believes that there is a growing tendency 

 over a large part of the corn-belt, where these conditions 

 prevail, to feed cattle more liberally than formerly and 

 that this tendency is in harmony with good practice. It 

 is rarely economy to carry stockers or feeders a consid- 

 erable time on a mere maintenance allowance, even 

 though the subsequent gain on grass be thereby 

 increased. 



As bearing on this general subject of wintering feed- 

 ing cattle some interesting records of the Missouri station 

 are quoted. The results in feeding all the roughage 

 of various kinds that yearling steers would eat with 

 corn in varying quantities produced the following results 

 in three successive years ; 



