Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1915 — Texas Baby Beef Clubs. [ARTICLE]

Texas Baby Beef Clubs.

In 1912 some of the cattlemen of Texas began noticing with alarm that their industry was going down hill, that it. was not worth so much to the state as it should be. They were pending 500,000 calves to be slaughtered, when by waiting a fewmonths these same calves might have been killed as “baby beef’’ with the assurance that the income from them would be $35,000,000 in the latter class, as against $2,000,000 as calves. The scientific cattle men of the state knew this, but the average rancher could not be made to see it. C. C. French, of Ft. Worth, secretary of the stockyards company, made up his mind that the only way to impress the “baby beef’’ lesson on the state w-as by interesting the boys. And thus was born in Texas the “Baby Beef Club” movement, which corresponds to the corn clubs in Indiana. Mr. French tells in the A- U Jest whet baby

beef is, and why j| worth more than mature ; beef. , , Baby beef in a technical sense is, not merely young beef. It is a young beet' animal from a year to a year and a half old, that still retains its baby 1 at. A Calf, with a good, supply to begin with, as long as it has Bilik enough from its mother, retains this fat. If nature's milk supply falls short, and there is no feed to take its place, the calf falls off and the baby fat is consumed to supply the; needs of nutrition. This om e lost can not be lepiaeed; The call may be feed abundantly and get fat ag.fi n. but the flesh of the animal is never quite the same as it ould have been had it not been allowed to become thin. There will never, be that, fine mingling of fat and lean that makes the highly prized beef. The purpose of the "Baby Beef Clubs" is not strictly to produce this quality of beef, but to feed the calf so that the beer it makes will be of superior quality and to mature it in the shortest time po-si-ble.

A\ hen the call was issued to the boys of Texas to assist in preserving the industry of their state, the youngsters responded with a will, and now there are more than 700 enrolled in the Baby Beef (Tubs.

Ranch owners volunteered to give Calves. The mayor of Dallas offered a sum of money, to buy calves and the Texas industrial congress offered $1,600 in prizes. Sam Matthews, 15 years old, became the first president of the League of Texas. Baby Beef Clubs. He won prizes in the fat cattle show at Dallas. He won the championship that year in the baby beef class, Sam grew so enthusiastic about his work that he went over the state felling other schoolboys about the baby beef idea. Figures on Sam's first experiment show what hundreds of boys in the Lone Star state are doing, Sam was | not fortunate enough to have a calf given him. He bought one lor S3O on credit while he was going to high school. The people of Texas concluded that any boy who was interested in his state’s welfare was honest enough to he trusted. Sam fed his calf 150 days at a cost of $23.50. The freight to market was $3.23. The beef was a year old when sold and weighed !,bOl pounds. The price paid was $05.09, the net profit being $38.56. In addition to this Sam got a prize of S4O.

This year's winner of the Texas baby beef championship was Howard Hale, nine years old. A ranchman gave young Hale his calf, and he returned home from the national feeders and breeders’ show at Ft. Worth with a SSOO cup and SIBO in money prizes. Now the movement is spreading to neighboring states. The Baby Beef Clubs are an adjunct of the Texas industrial congress, which has enrolled more than 8,000 boys and girls in various agricultural activities, such as cotton clubs, corn clubs, pig clubs, etc. And they are doing great educative work, as the ranchmen are raising more “baby beef” now than ever before.—lndianapolis News.