i8o My Little Farm 



beyond them. Yet the expenditure of the Depart- 

 ment provides them with pure sires at the same fee 

 charged for the cur bull. In a country three- 

 fourths agrarian, and becoming rapidly pastoral 

 at that, the bull is no small part of the environ- 

 ment within our power. I need not touch here 

 on the vexed question of locality and species, which 

 is fully discussed in the chapter on regional 

 necessity. 



Considerable numbers of our bulls, including 

 many well bred, are wholly or comparatively 

 unproductive, and the rate of failure, advancing 

 rapidly in recent years, is made still worse by the 

 addition of communicable diseases. The latter is 

 a case for treatment, but I am convinced that the 

 initial unproductiveness is in the main the unneces- 

 sary fault of those who breed and rear young bulls. 

 A common practice is to let the calf take " pot 

 luck " until he begins to know himself a bull, and 

 then to change suddenly from underfeeding to 

 overfeeding, which forces forward the process of 

 maturity at an unnatural rate, on a constitution 

 the more unfit for it because of the previous 

 neglect. In my own case, this scheme of treat- 

 ment is reversed from the start and at every point. 

 I get the constitution as highly developed as I can 

 before the stage of conscious maturity, and at that 

 stage the bill of fare becomes both simpler and 

 cheaper ; as much as the calf can eat of sound 

 home grown stuff, with concentrates gradually 

 reduced to a minimum. The condition may go 

 off a little. Let it. What I want is a sound bull, 



