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 
F 
