Vol. LXXX. 
Published Weekly by The Rural Publishing Co., 
333 \v 30tfi St.. New York. Price One Dollar a Year. 
NEW YORK. AUGUST 20. 1021 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, Juno 26. 1879. at the Post 
Office at New York, N. Y„ under the Act of March 3. 1879. 
No. 4052 
Outlook for 
I hive read Prof. Minkler's live stock article on page 
fK>0 with much interest. I have long thought that even¬ 
tually we should come to the English system of keeping 
a few animals of various kinds on each farm, and to a 
very diversified system of farming. But 1 think and 
hope that that time is still some distance of!'. I wonder 
whether Prof. Minkler could give us some closer esti¬ 
mates of the next couple of years. We have been raising 
dairy young stock here as a side line for some years, 
but have cut down our stock materially the last couple 
of Winters. We want to feed more stock in the Winter, 
and can pasture it in the Summer if we need to. We 
are wondering whether some steers would not pay us 
this Winter. We are figuring on a plan that we had 
Steers orD 
you to continue to grow black and white heifer 
calves, rather than to turn to beef steers or feeders. 
The Winters in Connecticut are so long and the pas¬ 
ture season so short and so uncertain that steers are 
apt to eat their heads off during the Winter feeding 
period. Again, you cannot ‘'warm up" steers that 
have been roughed through the early Winter by feed¬ 
ing them on silage and cottonseed meal from Febru¬ 
ary to .Tune. It takes corn or its equivalent to fat¬ 
ten steers, and these basic products must he prop- 
airy Calves 
they are bargained for at a price much below their 
actual value. To undertake to ship a few steers to 
the New York City market would he suicidal. 
Nearly all of the live steers sold on the New York 
or Jersey City markets go to the kosher trade, iu 
which case only the front quarters are used to sup¬ 
ply this demand for freshly killed 'beef. The hinds 
are ripened and sold to the hotel or higher class 
trade. One experience in shipping to this market is 
usually sufficient to discourage the average Eastern 
Winter Scene on a Vermont Farm. Fig. ’fid. 
from ithe Breeders' Gazette some years ago. of buying 
feeders in the Fall, roughing them through until Febru¬ 
ary, then feeding them heavily on silage and cottonseed 
meal until May or June, and marketing them. We 
should have to sell to local butchers, and I think ought 
to do better than Chicago prices. There seems to be 
more of a spread between the price of feeders and the 
price of beef, or perhaps between the price of live steers 
and the price of beef, than there should be. and I think 
the farmer will eventually have to get more of this 
spread than he is now getting. Whether he will get it 
■by co-operative marketing remains to be seen, but it is 
a question well worth bearing iu mind. E. i). C. 
Connecticut. 
HE prophet who could look ahead for a couple of 
years and correctly forecast what was going 
to happen to the live stock farmer would have a 
great many friends and patrons. I would advise 
erly supplemented with silage or with sweet feeds 
and the proper amount of protein. Then, too, the 
local market in the Eastern district is always uncer¬ 
tain and usually discouraging. The local buyer who 
kills for the local trade seldom will pay any more 
per pound for a finished steer than he would for a 
warmed-up dairy cow: and there is not competition 
enough to justify one in producing steers for these 
buyers. The local butcher is a mere meat cutter: he 
does not slaughter, but rather buys so many quarters 
or so many loins or so many rounds and hinds, etc. 
to meet his daily trade. These usually come from 
the Chicago packer through their local distributing 
station, and if perchance they are bought locally 
farmer who is interested iu feeding and finishing 
steers. The buyers grade arbitrarily and seldom 
allow Chicago prices plus the differential in freight. 
Then if your stuff is “heavy” it ought to have been 
“light.” or if it was merely warmed up it ought t'» 
be fat, or whatever condition is represented some¬ 
thing is “wrong” for the day’s markets. I know the 
ropes, for l was tied to them for several days two 
years ago, and my enthusiasm for marketing fin¬ 
ished steers in New York City is still frozen. 
Usually feeders are low in cost in October, No¬ 
vember or early December, depending, of course, on 
the weather conditions and upon late pasture or 
forage conditions. One can get better weights, but 
