114 Western Live-stock Management 
to be taken from their mothers so early. Instead, the 
mothers are turned out on good grass, which stimulates 
the milk flow, and the calves, therefore, get an abundant 
supply of milk for several months. They also will learn 
to eat grass and by the time they are nine or ten months 
old, they may be weaned without the least set-back. They 
should, like the spring calves, be taught to eat grain be- 
fore they are separated from their mothers, and should 
have grain from this time on through the winter until 
the next spring, when they will be ready to sell. The 
advantages of fall calves are: first, they secure much more 
milk and for a longer time and so make bigger calves at 
less expense; second, they may be sold at about six 
months’ less age than the spring calves. Purchasers of 
bulls to go on beef herds want to buy them in the spring 
and they want bulls old enough to go into service. A fall 
calf can be ready for this market at the age of eighteen 
months, whereas the spring calf has to be kept to an age 
of about twenty-four months. Of course the spring 
calf at twenty-four months is a bigger, more mature bull 
than the fall calf at eighteen, but the fall calf at eighteen 
is big enough for service and that is all the beef-man wants 
or is willing to pay for. The chief objection to fall calves 
is that cows are sometimes harder to breed in the fall. 
Some of the larger range-men prefer to buy their bulls as 
calves just weaned and grow them out themselves. Their 
reason for doing this is twofold: they obtain the first 
pick of the calves in the breeder’s herd, and they can grow 
them out just the way they want them. This is, of course, 
a very satisfactory method of doing business. The 
smaller beef-producers, however, do not do this but put 
off buying bulls until it is necessary to have them, which 
means that they must purchase a bull old enough for 
