It is always customary in our country to put salt around the water holes. I find, as a proposition, your cattle do not have salt at all, and it is very much needed in their development. Over some areas there is no lime, and there it would probably be wise to combine salt and lime, which can be very easily done by using a compressed cake, not rock salt. It may take these primitive cattle some time to learn how to lick the salt, but the next generation will be there all right, and it will have its influence in their development.
It is my observation that under a proper development of water, a fenced area and proper subdivision fences permitting the protection of one pasture for winter purposes, forcing the cattle out in summer upon areas best adapted to that season, that Florida lands will carry from two to three times the number of cattle that the average Texas range does.
I find, too, that a great deal of the range offers a splendid hog feed from the cabbage palm, the seed of the palmetto and from the mast found in the shinnery. It would seem, therefore, that an appreciable number of hogs may be produced without extra cost on most Florida ranges. While they will not sell for the top prices unless fattened on some concentrate, they bring a very fair figure as against combined result and overhead charges, and should be a big factor in revenue and one that we do not have in Texas.
Your lands are singularly free from pests. To illustrate, it cost us something over $75,000 to kill prairie dogs on about 450,000 acres of Texas lands, and outside of the shinnery lands the great bulk of Texas lands have been populated with prairie dogs, which in bad times take at least one-third of the grass. You do not seem to have the screw worm, which bothers us a great deal in very wet weather.
You can own your posts at a comparatively small cost and with normal prices of wire I should say could construct your fences for three-fourths of what it costs us. You have no very long drives for your cattle when shipping them, and in the matter of winter help to your cattle it will cost very little as compared with what we have to spend in Texas. To give you an idea, we are buying $50,000 worth of feed to winter a herd of 25,000 head of cattle. While your season here will permit you to get through with very little extra cost, if any, I think that you should make a provision for some concentrate, so as to have it. In Texas, when the grass is all gone, the use of cotton seed cake is limited when not taken in conjunction with a good filler, and there is never a time when you at least don't have a good filler. It is simply a matter of getting a little concentrate on it and cutting out the weak cattle and concentrating them to such winter help.
You are right where we were in '82—large areas of land, in which our problem was to make them carry themselves without cost, or pay a small interest until such time as they would sell at good value. We had very low values on cattle, long distances from the railroads—in fact, every possible disadvantage, but these lands have always paid for taxes and overhead expenses and have always given us a little something in addition, and are at a point now where they pay us a very good net interest on $10.00 land and $70.00 cows. We probably could sell every acre that we own at a price which would give us more net money than we get from the cattle business, but our people consider it a mighty good back-log to have lands which were almost without value brought up to that value and to their earning capacity.
I think that if you go into the cattle business you should study very carefully the possibility of disposing of the calf at weaning time. That is something you will have to grow to. The Government is authority for the statement that the economical production of beef is the calf, taken at weaning time, not allowed to go back, but kept coming in the matter of feeding, and if this calf is to be taken at that age, you can run twenty per cent more cows on your range, producing an average of fifteen per cent more calves, as against developing a steer to the three or four year old period, in which his individual gain is your revenue in the matter of a carrying charge. I believe, too, you will find it an economy to dehorn these calves at branding time. It can be done with practically no loss of blood. The animal is well in a very short time. I think he develops better and he certainly sells quicker.
Packers have immense contracts, and if the war continues they must have lots of tinned beef. On the other hand, if the war stops the world must stock up again with tinned beef. We know that they expected to pay an average of at least one cent per pound more for their canners the past year, but that the great drought has forced so many cattle in, the owners were very thankful to take what they got and the packers were forced to their capacity to attempt to handle them in such quantities. We know that the calf crop of Texas next year will probably show a decrease of twenty-five per cent, and that if rain comes in time to give good spring grass that a farmer will pay anywhere from ten to twenty-five per cent more in Texas than any other part of America. It would not surprise me at all to see your Florida cattle shippped over to Texas. We know, too, that next year, instead of the normal number of cows coming in in the culling process, which find their average market as canners, it will be the disposition of every ranchman to hold back cows which would ordinarily go into the culls in order that his ranch may be brought up sooner to re-stocking.
I would urge all of you to get your fences up and buy as many cattle as you can handle, because the she-stuff is going to be higher. This is particularly true of the she-stuff which has been selling at the values of Florida primitive cattle.