Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1897-11-25
WELL-RREp CATTLE.
In These Days 1t Does Not Pay to
Raise Any Other Kind.

In These Days 1t Does Not Pay To
Raise Any Other Kind.
Jt there be any one proposition in re-
lation to which well-informed opinion
is at one, it is that well-bred stock will
afford a profit when no other kind will,
and that when prices are so good that
the growing of almost any kind is re-
munerative, well-bred animals are so
much more profitable as to make il
very unwise to grow any other kind.
This fact is we'll recognized in the swine
industry, says Iowa Homestead, and
very few animals go to market now
from the swine belt that do not have
good proportion of good blood which
gives them form and early maturing
quality. In the cattle business, how
ever, the principle, although almost
unanimously admitted. is not so unan-
imously observed. a great many cat
tie are produced from matings that
never should have been made, and es'
pccially is it true that sres are used
that should have been shipped to the
fat steer market. This is very unwise.
1t is waste of feed, of care, of the
use of land, and of the labor that must
be expended in the growing of cattle
of any kind. With well-bred cattle,
calves intended for beef can be lib
orally fed from birth, whether they
be steers or heifer calves, and they
should never know the stunning that is
occasioned by roughing it through on
insufficient feed and with insufficient
care. Such cattle attain marketable
age early, and when they reach it will
have both the size and finish to insure
the best prices that are going. If, how
ever, they are stunted at any time, no
future care can fully regain for them
what they have lost. In this respect,
however, they are no different from
scrubs. For a stunted scrub cannot
regain its best estate either. With
steers of little or no breeding, good
deal longer maintenance is required, for
they will not fatten until they have ma
tured, and they do not mature until
they have attained considerable age.
There was good reason in the old days
why steers were kept until four or five
years of age; they did not mature until
then; and until they did mature no
smoothness or finish could be given,
and at an earlier age they would go for
ward coarse, and raw-boned, and only
command the inferior prices which
stuff of that kind brought. The market
now demands younger cattle, but the
younger cattle that it wants are of the
kind that natures when young. The de-
mand does not mean scrubs crowd
ed and shipped at an early age. With
cattle in which the breeding has re-
ccved attention, and which have been
literally fed from calfhood, the weights
of 1,40O or 1900 can be made at an early
age, and the style and finish will sell
the animal for good price, as COM
pared with the top Of the market, but
scrub cattle can be neither fattened
nor finished early, and hence they cam
not be turned quickly, and must be
maintained if they are to receive any
fattening and finish worth speaking OF
for nearly twice as long as well-bred
animals. These are the facts in rela-
ton to the matter, and they carry their
own lesson, namely, that no grower Of
cattle can afford to do otherwise than
use a good sire with the best dams he
can secure, and then push the young
sters by liberal feeding, that they shall
never know days relapse.