Stockyard
in animal industry, a live stock market, especially a market provided with railroad facilities. The essential features of such a market are pens into which stock may pass by gangways from the stock cars; and facilities for sheltering, feeding, and watering until the animals are sold. Ordinarily each pen has its loading chute. A continuous, narrow loading platform runs the length of the track. A long train load of animals of all sorts may be sent down the gangways, watered, and fed in an incredibly short time, each car or lot of stock being kept separately in its own pen.
The principal stockyards of the United States may be named in three groups: Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul, Sioux City, St. Joseph, Denver, and St. Louis; Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Cleveland; New York, Boston, Buffalo, and Pittsburg.
The stockyards of Chicago are considered the greatest live stock market in the world. Prior to 1910 this market had received over 90,000,000 cattle, 250,000,000 hogs, 88,000,000 sheep, and 2,500,000 horses. The number of animals marketed yearly exceeds 15,000,000. Animals are sold at a price per hundred pounds live weight. Prices vary with quality and season and from year to year. Chicago prices for 1907 were: Hogs, $3.70 to $7.20; sheep, $2.00 to $9.25; cattle, $2.00 to $8.00; and horses, an avererage of $106 each. Chicago March prices, 1910, for the better grades, were: hogs $10.90; cattle, $8.50; sheep, $8.00; with draft horses as high as $250 each.
Regular charges are made for stockyard privileges. The Chicago schedule of charges (1909) was as follows: for switching a car into the stockyard, $2.00; yardage charges for horses and cattle, 25 cents per head; calves, 15 cents; hogs, 8 cents; sheep, 5 cents. The charges for feed were $1 per bushel for corn, $1 per hundred pounds for prairie hay, and $1.25 per hundred for tame hay. Water and attendance are free. The charge of commission houses intrusted with selling stock was 50 cents a head for cattle up to $12.00 a car; $8.00 for single-deck and $12.00 for double-deck cars of sheep and hogs.
Shippers complain bitterly that buyers agree among themselves what prices to pay and that there is no real competitive buying at any stockyard. The shipper has his stock on hand. He is at heavy expense. He is far from home, and must sell. The buyer has the seller at his mercy. Whatever cause there may be for complaint, it is clear that, with freight, switching charges, yardage, feed bills, and hotel bills to pay, a greenhorn has no business to go to market with a trainload of stock.