302 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



and the convenience of the proprietor. Small fields are more 

 expensive in fences than larger ones, because there are more of 

 them to build and keep in repair. That item, therefore, is an 

 inconvenience. A sudden change of diet with cattle, always, to 

 some extent, deranges their stomachs, and bowels. Taken from 

 shorter, or dryer grass, and put on to flush herbage, is apt to 

 scour them, and while under such operation, the fattening beast 

 loses flesh, or at least does not gain it, and the cow loses in her 

 usual flow of milk. This we have known from repeated trials. 

 Not that animals should not be changed from poor feed to better ; 

 but whether, in the small fields which are to keep them through 

 the grazing season, and with an abundance of feed, it is not 

 better to let them range over all of them at will, and enjoy the 

 whole of it as they choose. 



We incline to the latter. Cattle are quite local in their attach- 

 ments. They best like the places to which they are accustomed. 

 They also like a variety in their food. Large fields usually offer 

 a greater variety than small ones, and almost every day they 

 seek that variety. For twenty -five years past, we have had a 

 pasture of more than a hundred acres in a single field, in which 

 we have grazed cattle, horses, and sheep. In that pasture are 

 different elevations, most of it being dry upland, covered with 

 blue grass, white clover, and other mixed grasses; some lower 

 grounds, growing red-top, and fowl-meadow; some lowland 

 copses of wood, and undergrowth of bushes, and rank, wild 

 grasses interspersed; and a range of marsh by a river shore, 

 covered with a rank growth of sedge grass. Almost daily, 

 throughout the season, the cattle range over every part of that 

 field, feeding in every quarter on which they roam, and fre- 

 quently leaving the highest, sweetest grass, to fill themselves 

 from the coarse, and what we would deem the least palatable, 

 herbage of the marsh, or woods. It is certain that they like 

 this variety, or they would not indulge in it; and had they been 



