28 GRASS BEEF 



as cotton cake, though this is not necessary if the long fodder is 

 of good quality. Old cattle can do without all this care: but 

 young animals will not thrive, some of them are likely to die, 

 if they do not receive this attention during the first five weeks, 

 or so, of the grazing season. Undoubtedly they are much more 

 trouble to their owners and, obviously, they require some extra 

 expenditure on labour to win the hay and to supervise them with 

 skill and care. 



There is a further point that must be carefully considered. 

 Starvelings are no good for this work. The wretched little 

 beast that has been starved on an ill-filled pail and a badly 

 supplied manger in babyhood, has galloped about hot, burnt-up 

 pasture from the age of four to nine months, has then gone into 

 winter quarters in a wet yard with dry straw, a few turnips and 

 very little hay for food, and so is little more than 400 Ib. weight 

 at 15 months old, is no use to anyone for feeding purposes. If 

 the grazier is to change his practice the rearer of these starvelings 

 must be completely reformed. This is one of the difficulties in 

 all agricultural practice: husbandry is so much of a jig-saw 

 puzzle that each member's work must be dovetailed together 

 if a success is to be achieved. The amount of money wasted by 

 the individual, to say nothing of the loss to the State and the 

 neglect of production caused by the vast droves of these miser- 

 able little bullocks, still often described as calves though about 

 15 months old, is at present a handicap to every progressive 

 feeder. 



It may be explained how and why the extra expenditure on 

 labour may be not only recovered, but, as I hold, made a means 

 of adding further profit to the occupier of the grazing holding 

 quite apart from the great object we have in view of getting 

 more human food from each acre of our Kingdom. 



At the present time the conditions of all our farms of good 

 grazing land are somewhat as follows: it is seldom that the 

 land of any one farm is all finishing bullock-land, but, for sim- 

 plicity's sake we will assume that this is so. We will suppose that 

 the year begins with the coming of the grass, and similarly that 

 the farmer buys in his cattle gradually so as to be fully stocked by 

 the time the full flush of grass is on the land, say by the middle 



