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Show THE LIVESTOCK SITUATION Cattle values are being maintained on a stable basis so far this season. As this is written, we have approached approach-ed the period when California grass cattle e.re generally plentiful, yet because be-cause of a late season, comparatively comparative-ly few cattle have so far been marketed mar-keted from California range districts. In fact, practically all of the so called call-ed "grass" cattle arriving to date on the Los Angeles market have been animals that were earied through the winter on cottonseed cake or other supplements. There appears to be g:adual improvement in industrial and business conditions, at least on the West Coast, and it is possible that the usual summer decline in beef cattle prices may not materialize, material-ize, particularly if cattlemen will make a practice of topping out their herds and shipping to market only the fat cattle, as rapidly as they are ready to go. Along this line, the practice of feeding out the cattle which fail to fatten on range pasture feeds, through use of supplemental feeding feed-ing and finish feeding on relatively cheap grains and hay in corrals, will help a great deal in extending the marketing season and in holding up values. No one wants to see burdensome burden-some supplies of cattle on the markets. mar-kets. A stable market is the most profitable market for the producer, for the packer and for the retailer. In fact, even the consumer is not interested in-terested in a fluctuating market. It is difficult for the average housewife to understand sharp changes in prices from day to day in the retail market.; Intelligent marketing and intelligent feeding will be a great factor in improving im-proving the financial condition of the cattlemen and in actually aiding beef consumption. Hog prizes have been well maintained main-tained through the spring season. When we realize that the slaughter of hogs in federally inspected plants over the United States for the first three months of the year shows a decrease de-crease of 1,400,000 from last year and a decrease of 4,000,000 from two years ago, or nearly 25 per cent, we may understand in part why prices have held up. Slaughter of hogs in Los Angeles also shows a slight decrease de-crease from a year ago and a heavy decrease from two years ago. With good grain fed hogs selling on the California markets at 11 cents a pound, there seems to be every reason in the world why more western west-ern farmers should engage in hog breeding and feeding. Good brood sows are relatively cheap in relation to pork values, and feeds are relatively rela-tively low in price. This is an unusually un-usually good- time for western farmers far-mers to make a start towards building build-ing up a home supply of pork. As had been expected, the past few weeks have witnessed no improvement im-provement in fat lamb prices and no improvement can be expected for some time to come, as marketings of Iambs are expected to be of record proportions this season. It would be a great help, in view of the large proportion of California lambs which will fail to fatten this season, if there were more interest in feeding lambs in the western states. At the prices which thin lambs are fetching this year, lamb feeding for the fall and winter markets offer a real opportunity op-portunity for profit, in the opinion of many in the trade. The more of i these thin lambs that can be kept out t of killer channels, the better for the general market and at the same time, lamb feeding on the smaller farms and ranches offers an opportunity op-portunity to profitably feed out this year's surplus grain and hay crops. |