A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



Without really knowing it I brought Sotham's 

 idea with me in the back of my head to Texas. A 

 year here developed it, and I sprang it on the Swen- 

 sons, who gave their consent, and in the second year 

 we brought all of our steer calves, born by June i, 

 to Stamford in late October, classified them, put them 

 in feedlots on a maintenance ration, composed of cot- 

 tonseed cake, cottonseed hulls, sorghum hay, and 

 black-strap molasses, properly balanced and mixed 

 with mathematical precision by machinery, and sold 

 them as buyers wanted them, any time between 

 November i and April i, adding the cost of main- 

 tenance to them; which, in the first year, was $1.50 

 per month. At that time it was thought that cot- 

 tonseed meal, except in a limited quantity, would 

 kill a calf. 



I proposed to my people that we test it out and 

 kill 100 heifer calves by getting them up to a full- 

 feed, and feeding them until the following May. 

 The experiment was on; we got up to as much as 

 4 pounds of meal per day, 2 pounds of molasses, and 

 all the hulls and sorghum hay (about half-and-half) 

 that they would eat. On about May i we sold the 

 entire 100 head, fat, without any evidence of "meal 

 evil," netting fairly well on them. We went out to 

 the cornbelt with the broad statement that well-bred 

 Texas calves were good enough for any cornbelt 

 feedlot. Many of our fellow producers joined in the 

 plan. In the meantime the Department of Agricul- 



[72] 



