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Show Beeves Fattened In Dixie Bring Good Price In California Market A gain of two and three-fourths pounds of flesh each per day is the record made by the herd of the mostly pure bred hereford beef steers, farm-fattened by Evan Woodbury over the past 105 days, at his ranch 7 miles south of St. George. The shipment of 79 top grade beef left Saturday for the coast markets, weighing an average aver-age of 986 pounds per steer at the Cedar City railroad terminus where they were loaded for San Bernardino packing center. The buyer was Ralph Pitchforth. Most of the steers were purchased pur-chased from the Gardners of Pine Valley. Turning them into fall pastures the first of November, they are transferred to dry lots after Thanksgiving when the process pro-cess of fattening begins. Mixture feedings of alfalfa hay, sorghum silage and chopped barley, most of which Mr. Woodbury produces on his own land are augmented at the last with rations of copra meal. Weighed into the early November No-vember pastured at an average of 700 pounds each, they make little gain if any until after Thanksgiving, Thanks-giving, when the mixture feeding crowds them to top market flesh, with an average gain record this year of 286 pounds over three and one-half months. This increase in-crease in weight was shown after the half day's drive to Cedar by truck. Asked the approximate food consumption of each animal in the fattening process Mr. Woodbury lists 1000 pounds of barley, 800 pounds of hay, and 3000 pounds sorghum silage, over the 105 days. This sounds like a lot of food but (Continued on page six) Beef Fattening (Continued from first page) the weight of the silage is naturally natu-rally increased because of the moisture content. -And the increase in-crease in daily poundage of the steers amply repays the feeding. As an added interesting fact, Mr. Woodbury explains further that the sorghum silage supplies the needed corbohydrates not contained contain-ed in the other foods, and acts as a positive conditioner for the beefers, and the final rations of copra meal put on the polish. Not less interesting than the gain made by the cattle is the modern agricultural method of cropping the land to produce the major part of the food, on a comparatively com-paratively small acreage. The crop rotation essential in the production produc-tion of sugar beet seed is largely responsible. The heavy application of commercial fertilizers for the beet seed, which is grown on the same land only one year out of five, makes possible heavy yields of follow up crops. After the beed seed, which requires re-quires one year in maturing, is harvested, the land is planted to barley which provides a late fall pasturage and is harvested in time the following spring to permit per-mit a second cropping of sorghum cane. Thus three heavy crops are grown in the two years. The beed seed yield is good, the barley bar-ley in 1940 yielded 70 bushels per acre and the cane crop 15 tons per acre. After that comes two years of good alfalfa cropping before the land is allowed to lay fallow a year in preparation for the next beet seed planting. It means a lot of hard and constant con-stant work, and Mr. Woodbury says they get little time for community com-munity life thus far bet there is much satisfaction in driving a herd of top grade beef to the market. This year the steers brought $11.50 per hundred, which is a little under the price realized by George Seegmiller earlier in the season for a number of picked beef steers that topped the Los Angeles market at 11.60. |