Vol. LXXI. No. 4163. 
NEW YORK, AUGUST 10, 1912. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
MAKING BEEF ON THE EASTERN FARM. 
An Argument for Grade Feeders. 
The time was when this little county of Schuyler 
every year sent to market several carloads of prime 
fat steers (some of them good enough for export) 
and beef production was considered a paying prop¬ 
osition. Our plan was to feed the calves the skim- 
milk with a little grain until they were qbout four 
months old. Then they were turned on good pas¬ 
ture until early in Winter, when they were taken up 
and fed clover or mixed hay and some grain. They 
had good pasture during the next Sum¬ 
mer, and the second Winter we kept 
them as cheaply as possible. They win¬ 
tered mostly on cornstalks and straw. 
April 1 we began feeding two quarts of 
grain per day and what hay they would 
eat up clean. May 1 they were turned on 
pasture with feed for a week or two, 
and were marketed usually in Septem¬ 
ber, at which time they would weigh 
from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds each, 
brought five cents per pound and some¬ 
times a little more. They were sired by 
a Shorthorn bull and from native and 
grade Shorthorn cows. The more good 
blood they carried the more profit they 
returned us, and as a general rule the 
more Shorthorn blood we had in the 
cows the better milkers they were. At 
the same time there were other farmers 
in the county who were selling native 
steers of the same age and that prob¬ 
ably cost just as much to grow for $35 
each. They were money losers for their 
owners. The dressed beef combine in 
their efforts to get control of the local 
markets in the entire East put the price 
of steer beef by the side to within one 
cent per pound of the price of prime 
steers on the Chicago market, and for 
the time being practically ruined the 
business for the eastern farmer. The 
dairy breeds were strongiy boomed, and 
the country was quickly stocked with 
grades of the different dairy breeds. 
Some of them were excellent dairy 
cows. Many of them were of but little 
value in the dairy. They would raise a 
fairly good veal calf and give some 
milk. The average farmer never knows 
how much milk each cow does give nor 
what it costs to keep her. There is 
some land on nearly every farm in the 
East that will grow Alfalfa successfully, 
and there are but few farms indeed 
that will fail to grow a paying crop of 
corn. The report of the Department of 
Agriculture shows that the yield of corn 
per acre is greater in the New England States than it 
is in the corn-growing States of the West. With 
these cheaply produced feeds and with plenty of cheap 
pasture lands, there is no reason why we cannot suc¬ 
cessfully compete with the western farmers in the 
production of beef. With the passing of this free 
range and the cutting of the large ranches into farms 
it will soon be up to the farmers of this country to 
produce the beef that goes to supply the constantly 
growing demand. We can combine beef production 
and dairying very nicely by using good dual-purpose 
sires on the dairy cows we now have. We can breed 
a good class of feeder steers without injuring the 
dairy capacity of our herds in the least, for the heif¬ 
ers will almost invariably be better all around dairy 
cows than their dams. There are several pure breeds 
that are eminently fitted for this purpose. The bull 
in use on this farm is the dual-purpose Shorthorn 
Glenside Hero, Fig. 357. His dam, grandam, and 
great-grandam, the dam and grandam of his sire 
have average yearly milk records of 9,554 pounds, 
which shows he had a milk inheritance. His daugh¬ 
ters, both purebreds and graded, show all the points 
of making superior milkers, and the steers that have 
been raised are of a good feeder type. We just 
slaughtered one that was light fed for home use and 
killed at 21 months. At local market prices he 
brought $46.22 and turned in a fair profit. His dam 
was a dairy-bred cow of the Jersey type, Fig. 358, 
that weighs around 800 pounds. She gave as a four- 
year-old 8,010 pounds of milk in a year and was dry 
36 days of the time. She did this on very poor feed, 
as we had no silage nor clover hay for the Winter 
and had one of the worst droughts during the Sum¬ 
mer. The heifers from such sires and dams cannot 
help but make good milkers, and their calves from 
dual-purposes sires should make even better feeders 
than the one I have mentioned, for the rnore good 
blood we get into them the more profit they will turn 
us and the more satisfaction we experience in seeing 
them grow. a. h. prince. 
Schuyler Co., N. Y. 
WATER AS A FACTOR IN AGRICULTURE. 
How Can We Nearest Approach the Optimum 
Moisture Condition?—Specific Means. 
Part III. 
In the preceding article of this series we discussed 
the importance of a proper physical condition of the 
soil, and emphasized the need of a granular structure 
in heavy loams and in clays. This week 
we shall take up some specific practices 
in the light of their effect on the mois¬ 
ture supply. We shall first consider 
manures. 
I he term ‘‘manures,” for the purposes 
of this discussion, will include anything, 
except water, added to the soil to in¬ 
crease production. The most important 
of these are lime, commercial fertilizers, 
and humus-producing substances. These 
agents affect the water-holding capacity 
almost entirely by their effect on the 
structure of the soil. Most chemical 
fertilizers are practically neutral in this 
respect. Where they are acid in reac¬ 
tion, however, it sometimes occurs that 
they break down the granulations in 
clay soils, thus making them sour and 
easy to pack. Lime usually causes just 
the opposite result in a stiff, heavy clay 
soil, so that an application of a liberal 
amount of lime to such a soil is often 
profitable. The addition of humus to a 
clay soil renders it more porous, more 
capable of absorbing water, and more 
easily covered with a dust mulch by cul¬ 
tivation. Its addition to a sandy soil in¬ 
creases the amount of water absorbed 
and decreases the rate of evaporation. 
From the standpoint of moisture supply, 
therefore, some method of manuring in¬ 
volving the maintenance of the humus 
supply is very important, in fact essen¬ 
tial ; and the treatment with lime will 
frequently prove profitable in the case 
of stiff clay soils. 
The next point to which we shall give 
our attention is that of irrigation. Irri¬ 
gation has thus far been used almost 
solely in arid regions, and in such re¬ 
gions it will always find its most ex¬ 
tensive and beneficial use. It is prac¬ 
tically certain, however, that irrigation in 
the humid regions, especially along water¬ 
courses, is destined in the future to a 
wide development as a means of tiding 
over dry spells and increasing produc¬ 
tion. The enormous yields secured where it has been 
tried indicates that wherever arrangements can be at 
all cheaply made for such irrigation, there is no 
doubt it will pay. For the production of large crops, 
the optimum moisture condition should not only be 
attained but constantly maintained. Irrigation will 
make such maintenance possible. Care and good judg¬ 
ment should be used in applying the water. It should 
be applied well before the plants begin to show suffer¬ 
ing. as the crop may be materially decreased before 
the plants show any visible sign of it. Let us have 
more irrigation in the humid region. 
A third point deserving of consideration here is 
DAIRY TYPE OF SHORT-HORN BULL. Fig. 357. 
DAIRY TYPE FOR GENERAL PURPOSE BREEDING. Fig. 358. 
