. Cyclopedia of farm animals. Domestic animals; Animal products. 318 CATTLE CATTLE The farmer is not justified in keeping cattle of his own raising until they are three or four years old, as is done by ranchmen. The price of farming lands would not warrant such a procedure. It is a well-established fact that the older and larger an animal becomes, the more food is required for body maintenance,—for body heat, heart action, lung. expansion,andotherfunctionalactivities,—and con- sequently an increasing amount of food is required for a given gain. In a general way, the two-year-old steer will req
. Cyclopedia of farm animals. Domestic animals; Animal products. 318 CATTLE CATTLE The farmer is not justified in keeping cattle of his own raising until they are three or four years old, as is done by ranchmen. The price of farming lands would not warrant such a procedure. It is a well-established fact that the older and larger an animal becomes, the more food is required for body maintenance,—for body heat, heart action, lung. expansion,andotherfunctionalactivities,—and con- sequently an increasing amount of food is required for a given gain. In a general way, the two-year-old steer will require approximately one-third more food for a given gain than will the yearling, and the three- year-old one-third more than the two-year-old. This is also true with cattle on the range, but there the extra food required in later years is offset by the smaller percentage of calves produced from a range herd of cows compared with a herd on the farm. Moreover, farm cows are kept primarily for milk and secondarily for calves, and it is to the interest of the farmer to keep more cows and correspondingly fewer steers. Farm-grown stock, therefore, should be fattened as baby-beeves, year- lings, or twos. Baby-beeves. Baby-beeves are cattle that are finished for market at the age of ten to sixteen months. This industry is now made possible by the fact that we have types of cattle that can be made fat at that early age. It is also encouraged by the packing- house buyers through their will- ingness to pay as much per hundred weight for young fat cattle as for older ones in the same flesh. Feed- ing for baby-beef is no doubt most practicable on farms that are partly devoted to the keeping of cows, or breeding ewes, animals which utilize the surplus roughage ordinarily grown on farms. Baby- beeves require heavy grain-feeding from start to finish, and it is evi- dent that this form of beef produc- tion would be less profitable if grain were scarce and high in price and rough feed a drug
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