512 On the Management of Breeding Cattle. 



him. I know many prosperous farmers who act on this prin- 

 ciple, and, if they do not use bones, keep double the stock and 

 make up for what the land will not carry by a liberal use of 

 corn or linseed-cake. All grazing land is improved by the use of 

 bones, and therefore it becomes an easy question of money value 

 whether it be not profitable to graze, say at the rate of half 

 a beast to the acre more by the use of bones, the cost price 

 being, for 7 cwt. of half-inch ground bones 21. 9s., which, lasting 

 five years at the least, is on the average about 10^. per acre. 

 Most graziers will admit that an outlay of 1/. is not likely to 

 leave a loss for a summer's run for a bullock. My manage- 

 ment therefore includes bone manure as indispensable when 

 success and profit are looked for in keeping a herd of breeding 

 cattle. The grass land in Holderness appears naturally to con- 

 tain a fair proportion of phosphate, and is in consequence highly 

 favourable for the rearing of calves, otherwise it would cease to 

 keep so great a number of cattle, year after year, as it now does ; 

 little, if any, manure being applied. 



I now come to speak of summer management. When the 

 time has arrived for the cattle to be turned out to graze, each 

 joyfully sallies forth to the pasture : if the nights immediately 

 following should be cold, the beasts are brought into shelter, 

 but as soon as the weather permits they are allowed to remain 

 out altogether. Summer soiling has been found unprofitable : 

 it causes much labour and expense of cartage and attendance, 

 and can only prove valuable under peculiar circumstances, such 

 as where the land is near a town, where much clover is grown, 

 or where there is little pasture land. A visit made to the 

 Avater-meadows of the Duke of Portland, near Mansfield, in 

 the year 1854, verifies my statement in this respect; the bulk 

 of hay there grown was certainly large, but the quality greatly 

 inferior ; the " cattle do not thrive upon it," answered the herds- 

 man in reply to my inquiry as to its intrinsic value as compared 

 with ordinary meadow hay ; no doubt it has a value, but certainly 

 not for fattening purposes. 



Young stock are put on clover, consisting of the usual mixture 

 of grass-seeds intended to be grazed ; and in order to prevent 

 lioven by too great a quantity being quickly consumed, they are 

 at first allowed to graze only for an hour, or at the most two 

 hours ; but the time is gradually extended until they remain out 

 altogether with the rest of the cattle on the pasture lands, and no 

 artificial food is given to the herd while grazing, except to such 

 as are being fed for the butcher, and to cows with two calves 

 suckling them. The value of the bone dressing before spoken 

 of now comes into use, as it allows of a greater number of 

 stock being grazed per acre. I keep my bulls in loose boxes 



