SUMMER AND WINTER FEEDING OF CATTLE. 53 



tion, a given proportion of it must needs be under clover 

 and rye-grass and other temporary forage crops, to be cut 

 for hay, and partly, perhaps, for silage, for use in the winter. 

 Under all circumstances the winter when all vegetation is in 

 a condition of hybernation, so to speak must be provided for. 

 Subject to this imperative provision, the whole of the farm must 

 needs be apportioned out for green, white, root, and temporary 

 forage crops ; the first and in part the last for summer re- 

 quirements ; and the second, third, and in part the last, for 

 the inexorable demands of winter. Now all this requires 

 careful management, accurate foresight, and a soil that admits 

 of being cleaned and cultivated, not only in ordinary and 

 average seasons, but in seasons in which clay-land cultivation 

 is next to impossible. 



Under this system the habits of the cows with regard to food 

 are wholly artificial, and this cannot fail to have its effect on their 

 health and vigour of constitution, as well as on those of their 

 offspring. The natural food of cattle is grass, when they can 

 have it, and " fog " in winter. They have grass throughout the 

 six months beginning with May and ending with October, as a 

 general thing, in the British Islands. Therefore for half the 

 year they are existing under perfectly natural conditions 

 much, no doubt, to their comfort and advantage. But in winter 

 they have natural food artificially preserved and prepared, and 

 so-called " artificial food " as well. In summer the natural 

 food, grass, is about as ideally perfect as anything they can 

 have, if it grows on good sound land ; but even grass may 

 be profitably supplemented by corn within limits which are not 

 very wide. 



On some sorts of land " scouring land " that rests on shale 

 or on any other sub-soil it may be regarded as good practice 

 to give the cows a few pounds each per day of undecorticated 

 cotton-cake : the shells of the seed, which all remain in the 

 cake, possess an astringent property which helps to correct 

 the aperient property of the grass. But even where this is not 

 the case, a couple of pounds of bean or pea meal, or of crushed 

 oats, or ground maize, in chaff, may be found to result in profit, 



