Stock and stalks

by James Russel Roberts

Why this remarkable turn of events? Well, there are two theories. One of these lets the agricultural college and all of us out without disgrace and is something of a slam on the farmer. The other gives the farmer credit for having more sense than we had. Certain it is that the farmer milking his beef cow produced milk for less than we Holstein men could do it. The first theory is that the farmer did not know his costs and therefore kept right on while the deficiency came out of his hide. The second is that the farmer had us beat on the cost of production. Is one or the other of these theories correct? It must be. It would be like taking the hot end of a poker for me to argue that the farmer is a fool and to have one of his number remark that, even though he was, I went out of business against his competition. Some one else will have to argue that side. I have a different explanation.

In my judgment the difference came about in the general rise in price of labor, grain, and alfalfa. The milk that we produced was like a garment cut out of new cloth—it all cost real money. The farmer’s milk was largely produced from corn stalks, wheat pasture, stubble fields, and draws pastured—material that must either be turned into milk or wasted. It had scarcely any market value. Our methods and our cattle were superior to his in many ways, but not enough to make up the difference in the cost of feed. The common method on the farm is to pasture corn stalks during the winter. It is a very wasteful method of feeding but it requires no labor. The cows gather the corn that was missed in the field and eat the leaves and husks. Few cows may be kept on a farm where such methods are in use, but figuring the stalk of no value, such methods produce the cheapest butter fat in the world. The farmer had us beat on the cost of production. He did not feed grain and forget to figure its value. He fed the grain that the huskers left in the field. It had no value except as it came to the milk pail.

When the Dairy Cow Needs a Friend

At one time I worked on a ranch in western Colorado where a large number of range cattle were wintered. Alfalfa in that community was selling for three dollars a ton, but we fed it to the weaker cattle only. The strong ones could live on sage brush which cost nothing. Sage brush was not a better feed. It was not nearly so good, but the advantages offset the disadvantages. So it was with us. The advantages of the two systems were weighed and ours found wanting.

The average farmer’s cow is a “scrub.” She usually goes dry for three or four months of the year and, even when fresh, gives about half what a developed dairy animal should give. Why do farmers persist in milking “scrubs,” then? Have we not all told them better? I’ll say so! Holsteins and Jerseys are not so rare that farmers do not know what they are. Most farmers have owned a few but have gone back to the old red stand-by. Why? Are we wrong again?

In Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and all over the east the red cow is disappearing. People there do a great deal more of dairying than we do. Who knows the business better, they who do dairying as a business or we who do not? But arguments are of no use when they go against known facts. The color of the cow is the result of a condition. The red cow has been better suited to a farmer’s conditions and requirements. Dairy cattle can not rough it like beef or dual-purpose cattle. Where the custom is to stable feed and give good care to cattle, dairy breeds naturally take the lead. Where the dairy business is a side issue, and besides giving milk a cow is expected to face cold winds and to withstand periods of semi-starvation, the dairy type is not in it.

The strong, lean, well-developed dairy cows that have never been weakened by starvation or cold.

To understand the cattle business we must understand the fundamental principles upon which the various kinds of cattle are built. Hereford cattle, for instance, are a pure beef type. The beef animal is trained and perfected in the tendency to save everything to itself and to load up with fat and muscle. Some Hereford cows can hardly raise their calves because of the tendency of the mother to save all her nourishment for her own strength and protection. The cow boys on the range rarely think of milking a cow that has lost her calf. The typical beef animals give so little milk that they can go dry at any time even on good grass with little or no injury to themselves. Some dairy cows would die even though sucked by a big husky calf if they were not milked, because they give so much more than the calf could take. The dairy cow is bred and trained for generations to digest all she can and to give it all away, keeping nothing with which to protect herself against hard times. She builds no big muscles with which to climb mountains, or wade through mud and snow drifts. The beef animal if treated like a dairy cow simply gets fat and is finally turned to the butcher. The dairy cow treated like a beef cow is a tragedy to behold. I have seen both Holstein and Jersey steers out on the range where Hereford cattle stay fat and strong and I have heard the cow boys cuss about letting them live, for they were more of a ghost than a reality. Cussed they were by men and God-forsaken, so it would seem. Since even the steers can not protect themselves to live where the Herefords will thrive, what can we ever expect of a producing cow? When she has given all away then goes up against the period of short pasture or semi-starvation, she begins immediately to readjust to meet the new conditions. But the work of generations can not be undone in a life time and she fails to meet the emergency and loses the vitality she naturally possesses.