WORK OF THE BREEDER IN IMPROVING LIVE STOCK.

By JOHN CLAY, Jr.,
Chicago, Ill.

INTRODUCTION.

The work of the breeder in improving cattle, sheep, and hogs is a ubject that can be best considered in detail. Looking back, one sees wide trail, with numerous bypaths deviating from the main track; nd then looking forward, one sees the fields that are yet unbroken, nd wonders where will the end be. The work assigned to the writer s to endeavor to trace and comment on the work of the improving reeders, the men who by choice or by chance have made our cattle, heep, and hogs such as they are to-day.

EXTENSION OF THE CATTLE INDUSTRY.

Behind us lies the New England shore, beautiful as to scenery, but vith rocky hills and narrow glades sparsely grassed. Southward is New York State, with widening valleys and deeper soil, while still farher south lie Pennsylvania and the Virginias-all the home of scrub attle for many generations. In these sections and in Texas and in he California valleys was the mother lode of the present cattle busiess, and following it came sheep and hogs. But it was not until the rrival of the era when our agriculture crossed from the original States of the Union to the great valleys of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky that he searchlight of improvement was flashed upon the live-stock indusry, which has been developing new fields year by year. When the ndustry reached the prairie a plain of unrivaled richness was exposed. As blue grass supplanted blue stem, and golden corn supplied winter ood and gave fattening power, then the breeder felt the pulsation of he coming strife. Look over this land to-day. Illinois, the great central State of the West, produces a perfect hog, with sheep still waiting for the improver's hand, and cattle rapidly climbing the golden stairs of perfection—by no means at the top as yet, but with aspiraions to be there by and by. The great wave of improvement which began in the thirties and covered pretty thoroughly the Central West, was arrested with the war, but swept on again with widening scope when hostilities had ceased. Down in Texas, the "Longhorns" had accumulated, and there was a market North, but the quality of the stock was undesirable. Westward, under the shadows of the Rockies, scarcely bigger than a man's hand, was a bovine cloud silver lined. During war times Iliff was in Colorado, Kohrs had tested Montana.

There was a glamor in free grass, and, at a time when our beef and mutton supply needed great extension, the ranchman sprang up with his herds and flocks on every creek. His advent had a vast influence and gave a great stimulus to the breeding of fine stock. The cattle man wanted bulls and the sheep man wanted rams, by the wholesale. True it is, that the demand was erratic, but when it came it was a perfect flood. We had it in the early eighties, and now it is with us again. Geographically speaking, the wave of improvement has been westward. To-day it is working strongly in the Southwest and intermountain regions. Texas is drawing heavily on our best cattle blood. The valleys of the Rockies are importing bulls and raising alfalfa, while the Northwestern States are taking both rams and bulls by the car load. But the cattle man is more aggressive in this line than his brother stockman. On the Pacific coast much has been done in the way of improvement, but there progress is often retarded by droughts, distance from market, and low prices. Some of the California herds show wonderful breeding. For many years past, with all the herds in pastures, the opportunities for development have been excellent, and as a consequence the cattle in that State are of high grade, most of them strong in Shorthorn blood, which has been freely imported in years past and industriously nursed and multiplied.

SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF EARLY CATTLE BREEDERS.

The United States and Canada (for the latter is so intimately related to this country in the way of improving live stock that it must be included in the forward movement) are countries of magnificent distances, and while, of course, we have had the railroads, still the foundation of the work of improvement was laid so long before the iron horse came into action that it is almost impossible to estimate the geographical difficulties of our earlier breeders. In England a good day's journey on horseback took Bates or Booth or Bakewell to almost any point he had to reach, but the men of Ohio, when they went forth to search for blue blood, had to cover vast territory, cross great rivers and lofty mountain ranges, and ferry an ocean that knew not the whirr of the screw and was but hearing the echo of the sidewheeler. Only great faith and indomitable perseverance surmounted these geographical obstacles, and the knowledge that the country was far behind the times in meat and milk producing was an incentive to action, for in those men's minds there was undoubtedly a glimmering of the future.

REVIEW OF CONDITIONS.

NEED OF MORE AND BETTER MEAT.

However congenial the work of the breeders may be to them personally, collectively there has been an enormous influence behind them in the incentive for improvement. The cry of the country has

been for more meat and better meat. We need more and better hams and bacon; we still lack in both quantity and quality in our mutton, while in beef there seems to be a tremendous pressure for the better qualities. While our cattle statistics may show a decline in numbers of some classes of cattle, still much is made up by the system of early maturity. The two-year-old has taken the place of the three-year-old on the block. To estimate the actual difference in production would be a perpetual-motion problem and one that could only be approximated, but it is patent to everyone that decrease in numbers has been largely offset by forcing methods. We have a fair number of medium cattle. It is the prime bullock that is being called for. The unfortunate lethargy of the ordinary breeder during the decade previous to 1896 in refusing to use better blood is reflected in both cattle and sheep.

CATTLE AND SHEEP INDUSTRIES COMPARED.

After the boom in cattle prices, from 1882 to 1884, we underwent a period of depression that drove the average breeder of fine stock almost out of the market. The depletion of our pure-bred herds was heartbreaking. Once before, during the civil war, we experienced a similar condition, but with good reason. Here we were in the piping times of peace, with the country prosperous, with a spirited demand for our meats, and yet in some years the great bulk of the well-bred bulls had to be steered. In a similar but far less extravagant degree the breeder of fine sheep suffered. The sheep business is always more uncertain than the cattle trade; more subject to sharp fluctuations; more susceptible to political and commercial conditions; it depends upon wool and mutton, the former an uncertain quantity in the world's markets, and a political football. The life of the sheep raiser is a sort of seesaw; now he has the high-growing plum of success and profit within his grasp and now he is down; down on the hard ground of failure and loss. One year he is Sisyphus, striving hard to push his great stone up hill; the next a veritable Jason, who has found the golden fleece. Wool goes up, then follows the sacrifice of mutton. Wool declines, but it is not certain that mutton will improve in quality or price, nor have we had in this branch of the trade that steady foreign demand that has characterized our beef, bacon, and cheese trade. Then there are enigmas in the sheep trade past all understanding, and disheartening to the improving breeder. When a New Mexico. lamb, hairy, half goat in form, but with a clean-cut, fine face, that equals the profile of the Cheviot, sells as high as the best Southdown or Shropshire, our ideas of breeding get a shock. But withal there is a tendency to push vigorously the development of our flocks. There is a disposition to follow the middle course, to cultivate wool, but not sacrifice mutton, and vice versa. Unlike the cattle trade, our great source of sheep supply is the open range. Gradually the days of cattle grazing on free grass are being numbered. The lights that

were kindled in early days in Texas and burned brightly in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and other Western States from 1865 to 1895 are getting dim and will soon be but a reflection in the bovine sky. Against this come increasing flocks on the cattle ranges. We are, so to speak, in a transition state, so far as our flocks are concerned. With low prices for wool, and our sheep unable to compete in a mutton line against our beef and hog products, the small raiser of sheep in such States as Ohio and Indiana was driven out of the field. On free grass they could be produced cheaply, and the fed Western wether-raised, say, in Wyoming and finished on Nebraska corncould be placed on the market at a figure far below the cost of the same animal in the granger States. In a milder form we had a similar experience in cattle. When the ranchman found out the value of the grass on the arid regions, and was not overstocked, he raised a steer for a comparative trifle, and the men on the high-priced lands of the Eastern and Central States found a new competitor, who cut into their profits. But that era is coming to a close. The free grazing lands, or, at least, the watered portions, are being preempted in one way and another, so that the cost of producing a steer in the West varies but little from that of growing one in the East, when the cost of transportation to market and other incidentals are considered. The breeding of cattle on free grass is practically a thing of the past. A few large herds remain, but in another decade they will have gone. The free grass of the West will be cropped by cattle that are fed in fields in the winter, by steers imported from other parts of the country, but the lion's share will go to our vast flocks of sheep that have found a natural home in the valleys and divides of the Western and intermountain States. But the day is coming to sheep, as well as to cattle, when free grass will not be enough. As their numbers augment, and they crowd one upon another, cropping the wild grass more closely and killing its productive power, winter feed will have to be supplied, and the cost of production will be materially increased. Then will come with them, as it has with cattle, more attention to breeding.

SECTIONS WHERE GREATEST IMPROVEMENT IS SEEN.

There is no place where demand stimulating supply has had greater effect than among the pasture herds of the West and Texas, especially the latter State at present. If you want a supply of good feeders in large numbers, where do you go? To the Panhandle of Texas, the valleys of Colorado, or the wind-swept divides of Wyoming, and you find there the material that tops the market. Of course, there are solitary lots of native-bred steers that are better, but if any large number of first-class young feeders is needed you must look beyond the Missouri. Why? Because those cattle men neither slumbered nor slept. They were buying blood, and that blood crossed on the already improved Texan or Western cow gave us the steer that fitted

the feed lot. When the farmer of the East and Central West could have secured the means in the shape of a good bull at no greater cost than $50, he used a scrub, and the result is seen in our central markets. Native steers have deteriorated, Westerns improved. Not the ranchman who breeds by hundreds has led the van, but it is the small breeder in the valleys or by the streams in the West who has made the most rapid progress. As in cattle, so in sheep. The writer expects to see smaller flocks in the West, more attention to winter feeding, and consequently less loss. Then will come the day when the flocks. of the pure-blood breeder will be drawn upon heavily and undoubtedly successfully, although, from the peculiarities of this trade, it is by no means so certain that the results will be as far-reaching in this branch of our live-stock trade as in the beef-making line, and incidentally, of course, in our dairy products.

INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN DEMAND.

Undoubtedly, the foreign demand has been the greatest incentive to improvement. It developed years ago in the inquiry for our hog products, an issue we were able successfully to meet. In our sheep exports we are still away below the European standard. True, we send large numbers of sheep to Great Britain, but they fill a thirdrate place. Thus far blood has not been used effectively in this line, but it will come. It is with cattle that we are at present reaping the best results of well-sown seed. We go to the parent country; buy in Aberdeen their best Shorthorns and Angus cattle; from Hereford and other parts of England we import the best White-faced blood. Streaming through our native pure-bred herds it reaches in diluted form our feed-yard steers, and then it returns across the ocean, giving that reciprocity of trade which England cultivates so generously.

Twenty-five years ago I rode across an Illinois farm. The original owner had "trekked" from Kentucky. He built wisely and well, and his sons were reaping the benefit. There was blue grass in profusion divided into generous inclosures by osage-orange fences, and the fine buildings were shaded by oaks and black walnuts-a heritage for any prince. On the pastures were 1,000 cattle, not extra in quality, but rough beef. They needed still the varnish that comes from corn. "We want these in England and we must have them," was my remark. Think of it; a quarter of a century ago we had not, commercially speaking, sent a live bullock across the Atlantic, but since then endless numbers, both dead and alive, have found their way to Europe. The Europeans do not get our best cattle because New York and Boston still claim these, but the exporter buys a grade close to the top. He wants nothing else. This influence on the market has been far-reaching and all-powerful when we come to gauge quality. Our foreign demand is here to stay, and it is a most important factor in

our commerce.

It can be helped mightily by the breeders of both