Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 240, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1917 — RAPID GROWTH OF BABY-BEEF INDUSTRY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

RAPID GROWTH OF BABY-BEEF INDUSTRY

The demand for small, high-quality cuts of meat and the increased cost of producing beef have combined to foster the rapid growth of the babybeef industry. Baby beeves may be described as well-fattened, finished animals, weighing from 900 to 1,200 pounds and marketed when between fourteen and twenty months old. It takes less food to produce a pound of flesh with them than mature cattle, they sell as high as the best of other fat cattle, and markets for baby beeves have been very stable during the last ten years. The young heifers sell as well as the steers, and the returns from the money invested in the production of such cattle come quicker. On the other hand, It takes more experience to succeed with baby beeves than with mature cattle, a betted grade of stock is required, and farm roughage cannot be substituted for grain to the same extent. First Beef Necessity. In a new publicstion of the United States department of agriculture devoted to this subject (Farmers Bulletin No. 811) it Is pointed out that the first necessity for the production of, baby beef is a herd that has at least a fair amount of beef blood. The cows need not be purebreds, but they should have at least two or three crosses of such blood In them A preponderance of dairy blood will not give profitable results. The cows should, however, produce enough milk to keep the calves well and growing without much additional feed. A good bull will do much to offset defects In the cow herd. A good beef form and a strong tendency toward easiness of maturity are essentials; the owner’s success, in fact, depends to a great extent upon the bull’s ability to transmit the latter characteristic to his offspring. Money spent in acquiring a bull that will do this is likely to prove a good .investment, for the

whole baby-beef industry depends upon the speed in finishing the animals for market. Getting Stock to Market. A herd at least large enough to produce a carload of calves a year is recommended in the bulletin already mentioned. Shipping in carload lots Is usually the only economical way of getting stock to market, from 29 to 27 baby beeves constituting a carload. Some allowance must, of course, be made for loss and for calves that are not suited /or treatment as baby beef. Since a well-matured bull can easily take care of 1 50 or 60 cows, the bull charge per calf alsj will be greater when the breeding is small. On the other hand, great care must be taken not to crowd the pasture. Good bluegrass og clover should carry from 50 to 100 cows on a hundred acres; other pastures from 50 to as low as 5. The amount of available roughage is another important factor in determining the size of the breeding herd. _ Roughage should form the hpsal portion of the ration for the cows. It cannot be bought with profit at the prevailing prices, and no more cows should be kept, therefore, than the farmer can feed with home-grown roughage. Calves for Market The feeding of the calves Intended for market depends on a number of factors, such as the season of the year in which they are born, whether or not any other use is made of the mother’s milk before weaning, and the age at which it is planned to sell the beeves. Suggestive rations In which these points are considered are 1 given in the bulletin already mentioned. These are made up of corn, cottonseed meal, corn silage, clover hay, and oat straw. If barley, mllo, kafir, or similar grains are substituted for corn, somewhat larger quantities should be used.

WELL-FATTENED, FINISHED CATTLE IN YARDS.