Florida: An Ideal Cattle State

by Florida State Live Stock Association

And that brings me to the principle of fencing, which I think may be covered under the general heading of Control. First, it means defined ownership, which is always recognized. It means fire control, because it eliminates the wantonness which we now find all over your open range, each man working out his problem and firing the range for various causes.

Fencing means that an area may be developed to its capacity. For instance, on your ranges fire kills the various varieties of the carpet or blanket grass and kills the little blue cane, as well as any number of other grasses, all of which, however, come back where an area is protected, and as they are among your very best feeds, the carrying capacity of a pasture is materially increased.

Water may be developed through the windmill process directly in proportion with the needs of the cattle and concentrated to them as against any water development on the open range.

It is a scientific fact that eradication of the tick may be accomplished by resting a pasture for a certain time. Fencing means the concentration of that area to the best bulls as against not only their mixture with the scrub bulls on the open range, but the fact that the old Spanish fighting blood in the scrub bull materially reduces the effectiveness of the higher class bull. Fencing means that if on any favorable areas you wish to introduce any of the wonderful grasses which the Department of Agriculture is showing can be spread very rapidly, it can be done concentrating to ownership.

Fencing means that lands which are now being occupied by some one else without revenue, but at an expense, may be made to either pay a fair interest on the investment of land, improvements and cattle, or at least a rental revenue which will take care of taxes, interest on improvements and become a net economy, as against the open range.

I believe, too, that the principle will stand that a property defined by fences immediately takes on increased value; that the buyer would pay more for it per acre defined than looking at it in the abstract as part of the open range.

I do not think that in the whole State of Texas you will find a single land owner, who has fenced his ranches, who does not know that it has been done at a splendid profit.

You begin your problem with a tick-wide eradication law, which Texas has only had a very short time. You begin it at a time when the Government and most of the tick-infested states are releasing thousands of square miles every year, and at a time when both science and every practical observer understands it as an economic measure, which may be pursued with practically no detriment or danger to the cattle. I think that we probably dipped in the neighborhood of a million cattle, considering the number of times that they were dipped, and we did not lose a total of fifty head from all causes.

Eradication means larger cattle in better condition on the same feeds and a less mortality. It means that they can go anywhere in America without restriction; or, in other words, a broader market and no punishment just before shipment. I do not think that the perpetuity of the tick can be defended from any economic standpoint.

I want to take up the breeding section, first with reference to what your cattle represent and a comparison with primitive cattle in other countries. I am advised on reliable authority that forty years ago the only ready money in this country came from the cattle men who either topped their bulls and took them to Cuba, or the Cubans came here and topped them, taking the very best sires that you produced for sport and slaughter. You have, therefore, for forty years been grading down, as far as the sire is concerned.