of cattle
for which the world will make a path to your door.

To arrive at this process I must first disclaim any thought of urging
any particular breed upon you. On the other hand, I could not be fair to
the problem without calling your attention to the fact that the Hereford
has been the redeemer of the great Western ranges. I am sure, however,
that the greater the degree of purity that you use in him, up to at
least a seven-eighths, will be shown in the result.

I find that there is some prejudice against the Hereford in Florida, but
as far as I can follow it they apparently got a very low grade of
bulls--I am inclined to think not over half-breeds, and then, too, they
found they didn't get any more at that time for the better grades than
they did for the others.

The limitation of the Hereford is that in the first cross between a
pure-bred and any of the primitive cattle ninety per cent will show
white faces or dominant characteristics, and just so in the use of
bulls, the animal may not have the intensification of blood that he
should have simply because he has a white face, and the bull peddler
has, as a proposition, bought something that he could sell at a profit,
rather than in following out any visions of cattle improvement.

I can not urge you too strongly to know absolutely the breeding strength
of anything you buy, and that means in a general way that you must buy
known cattle. I realize, too, that there is a great shortage of bulls,
and probably the only way that you can get what you want, because it
goes without saying that you can not afford to pay the price for
registered bulls in all your work, is to work in some way through a
central community of interests, go to Texas and buy the bull calf crop
of some herd of cattle that will show fifteen-sixteenths or better
breeding. I urge this freely, because you must go below the line and
none of our own cattle are available. I believe that if you bring these
calves over here, say in November at weaning time, at the age of about
six months, and give them some good winter help, that they will
acclimate quickly, and will give you very fair returns in the yearling
period, although, of course, you can not expect from them a real
usefulness until the two-year-old period.

While the Hereford has been the redeemer of the ranges, practically
every ranch man in Texas has felt that an undercurrent of Shorthorn is
of the greatest advantage. We have used it persistent