20 
BULLETIN 88. 
country, or ceased making improvements. Then the poor man 
who had no cows could not stay in the country. He had to go 
where he could work for somebody. Those who had a few cows 
and a flock of chickens could stay and many of them did stay 
where they were by taking care of their cows and chickens. Many 
of these people had not enough property at that time to sell for 
enough money to pay their little store bills and pay their car fare 
to their old homes. Many old settlers have told me that they 
were “unable to leave the country during those hard times, so 
they stayed and grew comparatively rich.” 
In 1895 beef cattle increased in price, and the increase con¬ 
tinued in 1896-97, until almost any calf would sell for $12 to $20 
when old enough to wean. With beef cattle at these prices, it 
became more profitable to raise calves than to milk the cows and 
make butter. Also, those who had a few cows in 1893 had so 
many by 1898 that they could make a living from the herd with¬ 
out milking the cows, and often they had not much time for 
doing much dairy work when they had so many cattle to look 
after. Herds continued to increase until the range was over¬ 
crowded so much that the calf crop grew lighter, and often many 
of the cows would starve to death during the winter. A period 
of speculation came in 1901 and 1902, when many of the settlers 
bought cattle to the limit of their credit. This overstocked the 
range almost everywhere on the Plains and this overstocking 
caused immense financial losses. With many it again became 
necessary to begin milking the cows in order to get money to pay 
the interest on the money they owed. So we found many cows 
being used for dairy purposes in 1903. The low prices obtained 
for feeder steers compelled the people to milk their cows. Dur¬ 
ing the early days attempts to support creameries were made at a 
few points, but these failed for lack of patronage when beef cattle 
took the country. A skimming station has been in operation at 
Burlington a few months at a time for several years. This was 
not in operation in 1903 as it had been superceded by hand sepa¬ 
rators. 
During the past two years hand separators have grown in 
favor among dairymen. They find that they can raise better 
calves by giving them the freshly skimmed milk than they could 
by feeding skim milk which had been to the skimming station 
and back. Also, by use of the hand separator, they take only the 
cream to market and thus avoid handling so much weight use¬ 
lessly. In 1903 there were ten hand separators in use near Wray, 
ten near Akron, about the same number near Burlington, and one 
at Cheyenne Wells. I also heard of some being in use at other 
points. 
The cows first in use for dairying were such as were brought 
