CHAPTER V 

 BEEFLINGS 



CRITICISM of agricultural methods should be constructive as 

 well as destructive ; and I am convinced that the production of 

 " baby-beef" from beeflings might be made to play an important, 

 almost vital, part in the husbandry of the future. 



It has everything to recommend it : it has, in the past, been 

 advocated by many of our leading authorities; at the present 

 moment some of our best practitioners produce it ; and it enables 

 us to take advantage of all the sound information that scientific 

 research has placed at the farmers' disposal. The objection to 

 it, however, has for the last 40 years been insuperable; for 

 it gave little, if any, opportunity for land-robbery. While it 

 did not pay, on the majority of holdings, to farm intensively, 

 since the extra produce cost more than it would fetch, average 

 land was only profitable when the least possible labour was 

 expanded upon its produce. The grass and winter beef, dis- 

 cussed in the last two chapters, concerned mnak that had 

 lived a long life before coming to the fattfning period, during 

 \\lm-h little except rent had been spent on their upbringing. 

 It may be said, in fact, that they represented human food pro- 

 duced from the land with the Wast povuMr bbour. With meat 

 obtained from bedtings die trouble of calf-raring is no sooner 

 over than the labour of the finishing period begins. This 

 Jitiuuliv has been pointed out to me over and ewer again during 

 tiu J vctn in whkh I have advocated tike system. Often, 

 NX lu-n I have urged upon a fanner the adi *&! i of turning 

 out 1O to 30 ytariing* erar season instead of a down three- 

 he has rcpfed that tine oaftlmd tarn more trouble 

 till the rt*t of the AnmudV ifc; and titis ID some extent 



An Minutl tht tv> > vtW at to or 1$ 



.'l 



