The Breeding Herd 65 



care, but it will not always pay to give them a full hay 

 ration all winter. Even on light feed every pound of 

 gain put on in winter will cost more than it will sell for, 

 but stock cattle are usually worth more a pound in the 

 spring than in the fall, because they have been carried 

 over this expensive period and are now ready to make 

 cheap gains on grass. Thus it is seldom advisable to 

 attempt to make large gains in beef cattle during this 

 expensive period, unless the price of cattle is high enough 

 to warrant producing extra large gains at a high cost. 

 Even then the pasture should be good, since cattle will 

 not make as heavy gains when turned from extra good 

 winter feed to poor pasture as if they had been fed more 

 lightly during the winter. If the pasture is very fine, how- 

 ever, the cattle will gain well, even though they have had 

 extra good feed all winter. This does not mean that one 

 must allow these cattle to become poor during winter, but 

 it does mean that economy must always be kept in mind. 



Two-year-old steers should usually not be wintered 

 but should be put in the feed-lot and finished for market 

 in case they are not fat enough for beef in the fall. Much 

 of our cattle country has reached a stage where it does 

 not pay to keep three-year-olds. The judicious but not 

 excessive use of hay during the winter, especially for 

 calves, and care during the grazing seaon will easily enable 

 the ranch-man to produce "twos" that will come in in 

 the fall weighing around 1000, which is about as large 

 as the common run of "threes," raised by the old method. 



As a guide to the amount of feed required for wintering 

 cattle, it may be stated that a 1000-pound steer or cow 

 will require seventeen or eighteen pounds of good hay each 

 day for maintenance. This means merely to maintain 

 the weight without either gain or loss. The estimate is 



