128 My Little Farm 



In any case, I think enough of my inference to 

 prefer for paddock the five acres plot of which four 

 acres were cut away bog, almost wholly covered 

 in bent and heather a few years ago. There are 

 still outer corners and faces of fences where my 

 leguminous transformation has not reached ; and 

 there, at certain times in the day, the calves will 

 go to feed, apparently with increased relish. For 

 the present at least, I must continue to believe 

 that in this behaviour they are but acting in 

 obedience to some necessity of their nature, and 

 the necessities of their nature have taught me 

 more about them than I have been able to learn 

 from expert knowledge. Besides, short of the 

 laboratory, what means of closer study can the 

 expert have than this intimate opportunity of 

 my own ? 



In earliest spring, when the calves are young and 

 small, the grass grows ahead of them, but while 

 the area is fixed, the collective appetite is steadily 

 enlarged, so that the paddock is eaten bare in the 

 back end, as I want it to be, because " hoose " 

 comes out of long grass in the autumn dews. 

 To make doubly sure, I house the calves at night 

 from the second week in September. Since I 

 arranged things in this way, I have not had one 

 case of " hoose." Before that, I had some experi- 

 ence of it, with several of the stock heifers plagued 

 all through the winter by that wearing cough in the 

 throat. It left them six months late in maturing, 

 which meant six months' food lost, and I mean to 

 have no more of that. The dry feeding is a farther 



