— / 
the straw is so used. 1 he same is true of the San Luis val¬ 
ley, which produces a large amount of straw, but also win¬ 
ters a great many cattle. On the plains east of the foothills 
there is more straw than cattle, and the surplus straw is 
usually burned. 
MARKETING. 
There is no definite age at which the old cows are sent 
to market. There have been times and places in the history 
of ranging cattle when the cows were never gathered, but 
allowed to remain on the range until they died of old age. 
The present custom is to gather up the farrow cows and sell 
them off in the fall, adding to them such heifers as prove 
barren and such old cows as seem to have passed their 
prime. . 
There is a wide difference in the age at which steers are 
sold for beef. Steers coming five years old used to be the 
• standard beef cattle, and when they live all the year on the 
range with no extra winter feed they will scarcely get their . 
growth in less time. By better care, more liberal winter 
feeding, with an infusion of the blood of the pure breeds, 
this time can be largely shortened. The general rule at the 
present time is, to sell as soon as they reach a live weight 
of a thousand pounds. If the steers have good enough 
winter feed so that they hold their own, they wid reach this 
weight the fall after they are three years old. \\ ith a little 
better winter feed and better breeding they can reach the 
same weight at two years past. The steers that go to mar¬ 
ket from Colorado at the present time are about evenly 
divided between the two ages. 
A few breeders of well-bred stock that feed liberally 
during the winter, are able to shorten the time still one 
year more and produce steers that will weigh a thousand 
pounds at twenty months old. It cannot be said that any 
one of these ages is the best, but the tendency of cattlemen 
is to feed better and market earlier. The younger the 
steers are sold, the more head can be kept on a given range, 
the smaller the investment, and the quickei the returns. 
Most of the Colorado steers that are shipped out of the 
State are sold for feeders, that is, they are sold to Kan¬ 
sas and Nebraska men who feed them for three 01 four 
months on corn and then send them to the market for beef. 
Some of the steers are sold directly from the range, but the 
great bulk are fed on hay for two or three months and then 
go east for the grain feeding. I he business of grain feed- 
ino - these steers in Colorado is yet in its infancy, and opin- 
