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Show 1 : 7Live.stoclc I Los Angeles, September 7 J. A. McNaughton, vice president j and general manager of the Los Angeles Union Stockyards says: Phobably the biggest problem facing cattlemen in the west is the rising valuation of land, and, accompanying taxes. Public grazing graz-ing leases are available only with ' the purchase of adjacent privately owned land. It is no longer possible pos-sible for a young man to homestead, home-stead, and gradually acquire a ranch of his own in this manner. Even cattle families who have handed ranches down for several generations are operating on a ( smaller scale than formerly. This ' all leads to one thing cattlemen I must practice more intensive usej of their land, and learn to get; more pounds of beef from thej grass and other feed their ranches : produce. j Most of the alert western cattlemen cat-tlemen are aware of this, and are ' obtaining better use of their l" in several ways. They are using the best registered bulls they can find, so that the cattle they raise ' are worth more . per pound, and will weigh more at a given age j than the cattle that formerly grazed the southwest. Our ranches ' have become specialized those in j a growing country are being used; as cow and calf ranches, where a cow herd is kept, and the offspring sold as weaner calves and yearlings. year-lings. Cattlemen in these areas have found that they can market more pounds of beef by selling calves or yearlings, and keeping more cows, than by the old system of keeping steers until they were three and four years old. Close culling of cow herds, and Lreeiiinir the cows to calve at about the same time are other practices that are boosting the earning power of ranches. H. B. Thurbur of Sonoita, Arizona, Ari-zona, who visited the Los Angeles Union Stockyards last week, has gone further, and by feeding his cows supplemental concentrates, and creep-feeding his calves, he is turning off about the heaviest calves in his state each fall. For the past 4 years, his calves have averaged 500 pounds at weaning time. His cows are fed cottonseed meal during the short grass period, per-iod, so that they can calve early, and still give enough milk for the calves. Then when the green season comes, and the cows give an abundance of milk flow, the calves are big enough to take care of it. A mixture of rolled barley, cottonseed screenings, and molasses molas-ses dried beet pulp, is kept in creep-feeders for the calves until grass is mature. Mr. Thurber estimates esti-mates that feeding his cows the supplement costs $3.50 per head per year, and the calf feed is about $1.50 extra. He is obtaining obtain-ing a 95 to 98 per cent calf crop, and with his calves averaging 500 pounds at weaning, is more that repaid for the extra feed and care that he gives his cattle. In his opinion, extra feed and additional care like this is the only way that a small ranch can be made to pay. He believes that a man can make a good living with 150 to 200 mother cows under such an arrangement. ar-rangement. Operating in the usual range manner, the general belief is that a rancher needs for efficient effi-cient and profitable operation at least from 300 to 400 cows. |