CATTLE IN AMERICA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 55, 8 March 1915, Page 4

CATTLE IN AMERICA.

The number of milch cows is increasing in the United States, according to the official figures the estimated number now being no fewer than '20,737,000. equivalent to an increase of about half of one per cent. With regard to meat animals-,-that is "other cattle," sheep and swine—the estimates indicate a steady and fairly uniform decrease in the number of cattle and sheep, a slight increase in the number of pigs, and a considerable advance in the average farm price of oattle and -.wine, since the census year of 1910.

Relatively to the increase of population

during the past four years, the accumulated shortage in the case of milch cows amounts to 965,000, or about 4.-1 per cent—that is, in order to have the same number of milch cows for every 100 inhabitants in January, 1914, as there wvvo in the last census year would require a total of 21,702,000,j which is 965,000 more than the returns from the various correspondents throughout the United States indicate. The shortage of meat animals, according to sound official authorities, is probably due to a number of contributing causes, such as the encroachment of farms upon the range territory, the absence of a proper range leasing law permitting economical management and utilisation of ranges, the shortage of the. corn and forage crop in the middle west, the decline of live stock breeding in the east and south because of poor marketing facilities as a result of many local slaughtering establishments having been driven out of business by the great central slaughtering houses of the west and middle-west.