Florida: An Ideal Cattle State Part 1

Florida: An Ideal Cattle State.

by Florida State Live Stock a.s.sociation.

Foreword

_By W. F. Blackman, Ph. D., LL. D._

_President of the Florida State Live Stock a.s.sociation, Member of the Florida State Live Stock Sanitary Board._

Requests for authentic information as to the advantages and possibilities of Florida for the growing of live stock, and in particular of beef cattle, have been coming of late, and in constantly increasing numbers, from all parts of the country.

This booklet has been compiled for the purpose of providing this information.

The gentlemen who have contributed to the volume are men of ability, long and successful experience in the live stock and kindred industries, and the most trustworthy character. Several of them have been engaged for many years in the growing and marketing of cattle on a very large scale in Texas, and have recently made a prolonged and close study of Florida conditions. The report of their findings is of the utmost interest.

Prof. C. V. Piper, agrostologist of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture, Was.h.i.+ngton, is recognized as the foremost authority on Southern gra.s.ses and forage crops. We are indebted to him for permission to make use of the valuable address on this important subject which was made by him at the recent annual meeting of the Florida State Live Stock a.s.sociation.

A study of these papers will make it evident, I believe, that Florida possesses a number of advantages for the profitable growing of live stock greater than those to be found elsewhere; among these are a mild, equable and healthful climate, comparative freedom from animal diseases, a long grazing season, vast areas of cheap lands, a soil adapted to the growing of numerous improved gra.s.ses and forage crops (especially such legumes as the velvet bean, the cow pea, the soy bean, the vetches, the indigenous beggar-weed, the peanut, and certain clovers), a copious and well-distributed rainfall, and countless springs, streams and lakes, providing almost everywhere an abundant and unfailing supply of pure water.

There can be no doubt, I believe, that Florida will take a leading place in the near future among the important live stock states of the Union.

What she needs is additional thousands of intelligent, energetic, thrifty and experienced farmers, who will take advantage of the opportunities she offers and develop to the full her immense and latent resources.

Lake Monroe, February, 1918.

POSSIBILITIES OF BEEF PRODUCTION IN FLORIDA.

_By Frank S. Hastings, Manager of the S. M. S. Ranch, Stamford, Texas, who spent two weeks studying conditions in Florida just previous to the Sixth Annual Convention of the Florida State Live Stock a.s.sociation, at which he was one of the speakers. These impressions have been prepared by Mr.

Hastings for the benefit of the cattle men of Florida._

Before coming to the State I asked that I might see as many cla.s.ses of cattle as possible and in as many different parts of the State as possible.

My first trip was through the Everglades. I then made a trip near Gainesville, and visited the registered Hereford herd owned by Mr. N. A.

Callison; also the grade herd of both Herefords and Shorthorns owned by Mr. A. L. Jackson of Gainesville, and the pure-bred and graded Shorthorn herd owned by Mr. S. H. Gaitskill of McIntosh. Then followed a four days' careful trip over the properties and herd of the Kissimmee Island Cattle Company, where I saw Brahma cattle, Hereford cattle and Shorthorn cattle in various grades, and their herd of Florida cattle bought last year. Then over the Indian Prairie country, the Osceola prairie country, including Halpatioka Flats, the marsh country of Okeechobee, with an unusually good opportunity for seeing the cattle scattered over the open range and to observe conditions on the open range.

Incident to this great expanse, comprehending over six hundred miles in actual auto driving, I did not see a single windmill, or other artificial means of furnis.h.i.+ng water, although I am told that on not a single acre of that entire property is there any difficulty in finding water at a depth of from ten to fifty feet. I shall come back to this item, only pausing here to call your especial attention to the fact that over this vast area of undeveloped water conditions, water can be supplied at a very small cost sufficient to increase the carrying capacity of the range at least several hundred per cent, and as against developing a similar water supply over the average Texas pasture country, it can be done at twenty-five per cent of the cost in Florida as against the Texas cost.

Probably the most important thing that I saw in Florida was the registered Hereford herd of Mr. Callison. I recall that he boasted that in eight years they had never been given any winter help, and there were no evidences on his property that the cattle were in any way pampered.

He had about thirty or forty of last spring's calves, which he was just weaning, and they were as good, on the average, as any bunch of calves I have ever seen in the great registered Hereford producing districts. I saw his yearlings and twos and his cows, and the entire herd shows in general development and quality a very favorable comparison with anything in the great breeding districts outside of distinct show herds.

If the climate of Florida can produce these registered cattle without help and have them make a favorable comparison with cattle in the great registered breeding grounds of other parts of America, there is no reason why beef cattle can not be produced which, in turn, will form a favorable comparison with those of the great pasture breeding grounds, which, in turn, are furnis.h.i.+ng the feeder cattle for the corn belt.

On Mr. Jackson's place we found both graded Herefords and Shorthorns in the third generation, with splendid development and quality, and we found in his registered or pure-bred herd of Shorthorns good quality and development.

At the home of Mr. Gaitskill we found both pure breds and grades of good development, and a splendid object lesson in a half-bred cow known as "Old Blue," her dam one of the primitive Florida cows and her sire a pure-bred Shorthorn bull. She is what might be called a blue roan, with the blue almost black. Then we saw her daughters and their daughters, and I think we saw a fourth generation, but either in this third or fourth generation, I remarked to Mr. Gaitskill that he could lie a little about that heifer, as she had absolutely every appearance and all development of an absolutely pure-bred Shorthorn.

In this same district we learned from Mr. Jackson that graded cattle all the way from half-breeds up to seven-eighths and in the mixed threes and fours ages, all by registered bulls, weighed 900 pounds off gra.s.s last fall. As near as I can obtain information, the same ages in the native Florida steers and under most favorable conditions would probably not weigh to exceed 600 pounds.

On this same trip Mr. Edwards of McIntosh told me that he got about half the gain on the native steers that he does from three-quarter-bred grades, on the same feed.

The foregoing is a practical demonstration that as far as climate, general feeds and ordinary normal conditions are concerned, graded cattle thrive in Florida.

It is important that I should have seen them, because I am working on well defined and demonstrated general principles of breeding and beef production, and they respond in every way to the foregoing.

From this time on we must reckon with the world's supply of live stock.

Without attempting to go into details, there has been a very material decrease in it during the past ten years. We know that Europe must be re-stocked after the war, and that the American supply is freer from disease than that of any other country.

We know that under normal conditions the beef production of America has not kept pace with the population, and that even without the influence of war values of beef, stock cattle values have shown a steady increase for the past ten years. There is, therefore, every reason to believe that for a very long period in the future, even taking into consideration reduced beef consumption as the result of subst.i.tutes or every other influence, there is a reasonable expectation for strong values and a profit on production under normal expense. I think that we may go beyond the favorable general market and say that there will be a better market in proportion for the intermediate grades of beef, for gra.s.s produced beef, than for the very extreme corn-fed finish, and that in the evolution of the Florida beef problem, the grades produced will at least be in as great demand, and probably greater demand, than the ultra finished cla.s.s.

It is, therefore, fair to argue that the market is with the producer.

You are singularly fortunate in having a Legislature which seems in every way disposed toward doing everything in its power to help develop the resources of the State.

The Government believes that live stock production is its second greatest problem, and in every possible way that it can give co-operation is pledged to do so. In fact, I do not think that I would have been here at all unless a high official in the Bureau of Animal Industry had not urged me to come, in line with their work of general development throughout the South.

Another thing, I find that Florida is very much in the public eye, and that all the live stock journals are anxious to have anything which touches upon increased beef production anywhere, but in the South particularly.

With the knowledge that I might be here some time this winter, I talked to two of the great packers about the development of the beef industry in the South, and they both said that they thought the South was going to come to the front very rapidly, and that either they or some one else would undoubtedly keep pace with the development by enlarging their present facilities or building new packing houses.

In that connection a packer loves a hog country to work in conjunction with cattle. Without giving the topic any more than this general statement, I can see where hog production is going to be one of the great things in Florida, and that while in Texas we do not attempt to produce any hogs along with our cattle, that hogs will be to some extent a part of the great pasture problems.

In a general way, conditions are very similar in Florida now to those of some thirty-five years ago in Texas, at which time that State was an open range proposition. Today, with the exception of a very small strip along the Gulf Coast, the entire State of Texas is under fence, and in a general way has been under fence for nearly twenty years.

There has never been a time in the State of Texas in the past twenty years when practically all of the grazing area of the State has not been occupied, and as against the cattle carried on the open range with practically no water development, the pastures of Texas, which are known as the range (but the word range in Texas means large bodies of inclosed land), are carrying several hundred per cent more cattle than at that time.

The thing which in Texas led to great hards.h.i.+ps alike to the large pasture owner and to the settler himself was the fact that so much of the land did not lie in solid bodies. I judge that in the main there is much less of this in Florida than in Texas, and that either by part.i.tion, or purchase, or auxiliary lease, the great bulk of that complication can be handled.

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 owners.h.i.+p, 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 gra.s.s and kills the little blue cane, as well as any number of other gra.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s bull. Fencing means that if on any favorable areas you wish to introduce any of the wonderful gra.s.ses which the Department of Agriculture is showing can be spread very rapidly, it can be done concentrating to owners.h.i.+p.

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.