434 



The Country Gcnilcinan's MagarAnc 



MEAT-MAKING. 



WE have now arrh'ed at what may be 

 called tlie second transitionary 

 jieriod of the year, in the business of meat- 

 making. The first occurs when the supply 

 of winter-fed stock is nearly exhausted, and 

 the scene of operations is changed from the 

 stalls and boxes of the farmstead to the open 

 pasture fields. The resources of the latter 

 are now drawing to a close for a season, and 

 Ave have to prepare for in-door w'ork, and a 

 change of system. While the pastures re- 

 main in full vigour, meat-making is usually 

 the result of a series of natural agencies, but 

 art is called into constant requisition in the 

 stall, and skill exercises a decided influence on 

 success. Not that we mean to say that in summer 

 grazing skill is unnecessary, or that the ani- 

 mals may be left, as it were, in a state of 

 nature. It is true that the practice which 

 prevails in many instances might lead us to 

 suppose that such is the case, but if so, these 

 instances are not to be taken as exemplifying 

 the best and most profitable system of sum- 

 mer grazing. 



In winter feeding, live stock are entirely 

 dependent on man. The animals are con- 

 fined, and cannot range for themselves in 

 search of food. Everything must be carried 

 to them, and given by the hands of those 

 who are in attendance upon them. Even 

 the manner in which they are confined, 

 whether tied in stalls, or shut up in boxes, or 

 allowed the comparative freedom of an open 

 yard, is a matter of special arrangement. 

 They are entirely under the control of man, 

 dependent upon him for every mouthful, and 

 and it is his art which selects their food and 

 prescribes the manner in which it is given to 

 tliem. Notwithstanding this, 



' ' That art 

 Which you say adds ta nature, is an art 



AVhich Nature makes 



The art itself is Nature." 



The food given, and all the details are 

 founded on natural principles, when the art 

 of meat-making is properly and systematically 

 conducted ; and any departure from those 

 principles is certain to cause unsuccessful- 

 ness and disappointment as the natural re- 

 sults. 



Many persons who contributed largely in 

 past years to the meat supplies of the nation, 

 will be prevented from doing so at this time 

 from the scarcity of material, so far as that is 

 usually provided by the produce of their own 

 farms. We have a scarcity of roots, the 

 grand foundation of meat-making in this 

 countiy during the winter and spring months; 

 and along with scarcity there is also want of 

 quality, or lack of a suflficient degree of 

 nutritiousness in those roots which have 

 been grown this season. All this will tell on 

 the production of meat, and its " manufac- 

 ture" will be a more expensive operation than 

 usual. That " standing menace to the vege- 

 tarians," as the far-famed M'Combie is epi- 

 grammatically styled by " The Druid," tells us- 

 that in preparing cattle for winter feeding,, 

 everything depends on their being put up 

 early, and he reckons that " a week's house- 

 feeding in August, September, and October, 

 is as good as three weeks in the dead of 

 winter." This, we need scarcely say, is very 

 different from the practice followed by man}-^ 

 who engage in feeding cattle for the butcher.. 

 They defer putting up the beasts as long as 

 possible ; while anything like a decent bite is 

 to be got on the pasture the cattle are kept 

 out, with, perhaps, the help of a few early 

 turnips thrown down on the grass to pick at. 

 But the Nestor of Aberdeenshire cattle 

 feeders emphatically says, that if he did not 

 take his beasts up in time he " could pay 

 no rent at all," ^nd this is his experience- 

 after having •' for many years fed from three 

 hundred to four hundred head of cattle," so- 



