FARM AND STATION.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 14327, 12 April 1912, Page 10

FARM AND STATION.

BEEF BREEDS IX THE UNITED STATES.

Aii address on "The Vanishing Rango and Our .Beef; Production," was given recently under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture of the University of Ediburgli, by Mr John Clay, of Chicago.- wlio was-not only well known in Scotland, but .had been a leader in tho development of the cattle industry in the Tnitcd States and Canada. "When the i»rcat. civil war Mas over between the North and South, and commerce began to How again, there was an immense reserve of cattle in Texas, and these cattle be«an to come up northwards, where they had tree gracing. This proved very profitable, and men made a great deal of money, but tlie terrific winter of 1880 altered everything. He dated, from 1887 the vanishing range of this immense country in the matter of cattle production, because then the barbed wire fence was introduced. The consequence'was the range was being divided no into small cattle farms or ranches, and while formerly millions of cattle came up from Texas, he did not believe that last.year there were fifty thousand cattle. * Tlie small rangomeu took en re to provide hay or grain, and immense quantities of cotton seed were spread out on the ground. The range had -practically passed awaw. There were three groat "breeds of beef cattle on the range. These were Shorthorns. . Aberdeen-Angus, and Herefords. About 1878. and earlier in the century, but more especially about 1817, a great number of Shorthorns were taken over. In 1832 many more were introduced, and gradually they grew to have a very large number of matrnifieent Shorthorns, mure especially in Kentucky. "When lie went out in 1874 Kentucky was the home of the American Shorthorn, but since then it had lost its pre-eminence, and the Shorthorn had spread all over. About 1878 the Herefords*began to take a prominent place, and the ranchman finding that the Herefords were a grazing animal bought very freely of them. and there was tremendous strife between the Shorthorn and tho Hereford men. Tlie result was that tho Hereford almost took possession of the range country. Xo bovine animal that be knew of was so fitted for grazing as crobably the Hereford, so far as beef cattle was concerned, and tho Ayrshire so far as dairy cattle was concerned, ar.d the consequence was that in the Western States they saw almost nothing but white-faced cattle. A few years later. Aberdeen-Angus cattle were tried, but they were found to lie a failure upon the range. But the AberdeenAngus had taken its place in their central corn-growing States, because he believed there was no animal which could take the place of the AberdeenAngus when they gave him rich pasture ] to so upon, and plenty of feed to "marble" his beef. |