NEW YORK, JANUARY 30, 1904 
Vol. LXIII. No. 2818 
$1 PER YEAR 
BEEF MAKING IN NEW YORK. 
The Steer Compared with the Cow. 
One of the most serious questions before the farmer 
of to-day is the difficulty of obtaining labor to carry 
on the operations of his farm. It is not so much a 
question of high wages, for it is doubtful whether the 
increase in farm wages in the past four or five years 
has been any greater, proportionately, than the in¬ 
crease in the receipts from the average farm for the 
same period, but it is rather one of obtaining com¬ 
petent help at any price. Of course most of us get 
our work done in the end somehow, but it is at an 
expense of anxiety and haste which robs us of much 
of the satisfaction which comes from doing our work 
promptly and with system. While this is true of all 
branches of farming, it applies with special force to 
the dairy industry, where the dread of long hours, the 
distaste for the work of milking, and particularly the 
confinement on Sundays, combine to make most farm 
hands fight shy of 
the dairy farm. 
In this section- 
western New York- 
most of the cleared 
land is tillable. We 
do not have the rock 
and steep hillsides 
of eastern and 
southern New York, 
c o n s e q u ently the 
growing o f grain, 
fruit and vegetables 
is the mainstay of 
most of our farms. 
Still, we must keep 
stock to consume the 
roughage of the 
farm and to main¬ 
tain its fertility, and 
as the care of a large 
dairy does not hitch 
very well with the 
growing of the crops 
named above, it has 
come about that the 
live stock industry 
here has developed 
along the lines of 
sheep keeping and 
beef production—the 
lines of least resist¬ 
ance. There are two 
classes of cattle 
feeders here, those 
keeping three or four cows, who raise a few steers 
from calves and sell them when about two years old, 
and those who buy feeders in Buffalo, keep them six 
months or a year and then turn them off. The first 
method makes more trouble, but taking one year 
with another I believe it pays best for the man with 
small capital, provided his calves possess at least one- 
half beef blood. There is no difficulty in raising two 
calves from the skim-milk of each cow if they are 
taught to eat grain as early as possible. 
I should like to give the history of a lot of six ani¬ 
mals two years old next Spring, not because there is 
anything remarkable about it, but to illustrate the 
point I am trying to make. The owner kept three 
cows. He kept their calves, feeding them new milk 
for a week or so, then gradually changing over to 
skim-milk. A little oil meal was stirred into this 
until the calves learned to eat a dry mixture of 
ground corn and oats and say one-fifth oil meal. Then 
he bought three more, cutting down the milk for the 
older ones. Four were about equal parts Jersey and 
Short-horn. The others ran more to the latter breed, 
but all have made a remarkably even growth. They 
were pastured during the Summer and Fall, being fed 
what milk there was and about one quart apiece of 
the grain mixture per day. September and October 
are the critical months of a calf’s first year, and I 
believe it would be better to confine them to a roomy 
shed or basement, as the nights begin to get cool and 
the pasturage short and feed the same as though in 
Winter quarters. Indeed, the best calves are those 
which are not pastured at all the first Summer but 
are kept the whole time in this way. 
During the first Winter these calves were fed all 
the silage they would clean up twice a day, with a 
little hay at noon, also about half a pound apiece per 
day of cotton-seed meal. On this fare they made a 
steady growth and came out in the Spring with the 
smooth sleek coat so often lacking in cattle of that 
age. This Fall, beginning about September 15, they 
were fed corn fodder in the pasture until put in the 
barn for the Winter. This, I think, is an important 
practice, as even when the pasture appears good there 
is apt to be a falling off in the condition of the herd 
at this time of year unless some extra feed is given. 
For the first half of the Winter these cattle are get¬ 
ting about the same ration as last. During the latter 
half they will be given a little ground feed (corn and 
oats) beginning with say two quarts, and increasing 
to five or six quarts per day during the last month. 
Of course it is a little early to predict results, but 
last year the same farmer’s cattle weighed 1,150 
pounds apiece in May and sold for 4 y 2 cents per pound 
to a butcher in the nearest large town—age and treat¬ 
ment being practically the same. 
The Buffalo steers are usually fed in larger lots, 
many of them on farms worked by tenants, and when 
the margin between the cost per pound of good feed¬ 
ers and the selling price when fat is one cent or more, 
there is probably more profit than in raising them up 
from calves. Many of these are fattened on dry feed, 
but much more grain is required than with silage, 
and among the best farmers the silo Is coming rap¬ 
idly into use, and is proving almost as valuable as in 
the dairy. The point I am trying to get at is this: 
There is many a dairyman who would like to get our 
of it. He is discouraged by trying to put up with in¬ 
competent help or no help at all, and is weary of the 
steady confinement every day in the week and every 
week in the year. He has spent the best years of his 
life in the work, it may be years of success, but now, 
when he ought to be taking life easier, he finds more 
and more work crowding upon him. He cannot sell 
out, as the proceeds would not be enough to support 
his family off the farm; besides, he could not bear to 
part with the home built up by a life of toil. Finally, 
as a last resort, he moves to the village and leases his 
farm to one of those very men who had proved him¬ 
self impossible as a farm hand, and the last state of 
that man is worse than the first. I may have painted 
this a little black, but are not instances almost as 
bad altogether too common? Most farmers in the 
dairy country do not take kindly to sheep, and in most 
cases sheep farming would entail considerable expense 
for suitable fences 
and buildings, but it 
seems to an outsider 
that the substitution 
of steers, either 
h o m e-g r o w n o r 
western feeders, for 
a more or less large 
fraction of the poor¬ 
er cows, would do 
something toward 
the solution of the 
labor question o n 
many dairy farms. 
This does not apply 
to the s u c c e s sful 
cow man who is get¬ 
ting $60, $80 or $100 
per cow r each year, 
and who is or ought 
to be, in love with 
his calling; he has 
somet hing better, 
and I take off my 
hat to him. But he 
is sadly in the mi¬ 
nority. One of the 
best dairy authori¬ 
ties in New York es¬ 
timates the average 
annual income per 
cow in the State at 
$40. I do not know 
what it costs in feed 
and labor to keep 
this cow, but I have a strong idea that a steer that 
sells for $50 when two years old represents consid¬ 
erably more net profit. w. c. blteix. 
A FINE BEEF ANIMAL.—The above illustration 
shows a fair sample of the purebred stock that has 
been used in improving the herds'of Argentina. The 
native cattle were inferior, and little was done by way 
of improvement until about the middle of the last 
century. During the past 10 years the development 
has been very rapid. Shows are held, which are well 
attended, and large sales are the result. Special 
Agent Bicknell, writer of the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture bulletin from which this cut was reproduced, 
found that these South American cattlemen are 
anxious to secure the very best breeding stock, and 
are willing to pay exceptional prices for such as meets 
their requirements. The animals most in favor for 
this purpose are Short-horns and Herefords, essen¬ 
tially the beef type. There is said to be only one Jer¬ 
sey herd of any size in Argentina, most people con¬ 
sidering them a luxury, as they do not make beef. 
GRANDISON 42, PRIZE CHAMPION HEREFORD, 3^ YEARS OLD. Fig. 27. 
Reproduced from U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry Bulletin 48. 
