CATTLE FOOD. 303 



confined to either alone, would have hankered after the other. 

 We admit that some of the grass where cattle continuously feed, 

 by being much trodden over and laid upon, becomes soiled, and 

 distasteful for the time, but the next rain washes it off, and it 

 becomes palatable as ever. Cattle, in their tastes, are somewhat 

 like men, and as those accustomed to the highest luxuries, like, 

 occasionally, a lunch of brown bread, with a smoked herring, 

 and partake of it with great relish, so cattle, from the choicest 

 blue grass and white clover, love to plunge into the coarser 

 grasses, or browse the green leaves from the tangled brushwood. 

 Our impression is, that the experience of both graziers and dairy- 

 men is growing in favor of the larger pastures without change, 

 to the smaller ones with frequent alternations provided the 

 grasses be equally abundant. 



WINTER FORAGE, AND CARE OF NEAT STOCK. 



A foreign traveler, accustomed to the economical methods of 

 feeding and caring for cattle among the densely populated nations 

 of Europe, would, in his examinations of our general American 

 ways of stock feeding in winter, suppose us to be the most neg- 

 ligent, careless, and wasteful people on earth. And he would 

 not be far out of the way in that particular. 



It is true, we have a great many painstaking, economical 

 farmers among us, who not only raise good cattle, but take pains 

 to secure proper forage for them, feed them enough of it, and 

 provide for their comfort by way of shelter, whenever needed. 

 In contrast to them, however, the common rule, particularly in 

 the newer States, is quite the reverse. A quantity, more or less, 

 of bad conditioned hay, corn fodder, or straw, is stacked upon 

 the premises, around barns, or sheds, and in a great many cases, 

 in the yards, or fields of the farm, without artificial shelter of 

 any kind. To these stacks the stock are driven, when the snows, 

 or storms of approaching winter compel them to be fed. The 



