CATTLE GENERAL MANAGEMENT. 771 



stunting the calves. This is often done during the first few 

 weeks, or the first winter, and not infrequently the calves are 

 first stunted on skimmed milk, and this is followed by wintering 

 on poor hay or at the straw- stack, with insufficient shelter, so 

 that when a year old this double process has reduced them to a 

 point from which they can never fully recover. A calf which, 

 from insufficient or improper food, comes to a stand in growth 

 during the first year can never make so good an animal as if 

 kept growing continually. So there is not only a loss of food 

 during this period, but on all the food consumed by it after. 

 To get an idea how common this evil is, it is only necessary to 

 travel, and inspect the stock in March. 



In the same line is to be enumerated bad wintering. The 

 animal on grass through the summer recovers in a measure 

 from the starvation of its first winter, and fall finds it fairly 

 thrifty, and if it was now fed so as to keep it growing through 

 the second winter, it would be ready the coming spring to make 

 early and rapid growth, but the farmer has more stock than he 

 has feed for, or neglects to save his feed and depends on the 

 stalk pasture and straw-stack to carry them through, and April 

 finds his stock a hundred pounds lighter than they were in Oc- 

 tober, and it takes the best part of the grazing season to bring 

 them to the weight and condition they were in the previous 

 autumn, and thus the season of profitable pasturing is shortened 

 to a fow months during the hottest season of the year, when 

 flies are troublesome, and short pastures and drought most 

 likely. 



This bad wintering often leads to bad summering, for the 

 stock is in so great need of grass that they are turned out as 

 soon as it is possible to get a living, and, as a consequence, the 

 pastures are tramped and gnawed so as to never recover, and 

 the stock is on short rations all summer. This is especially 

 likely to be the case when clover is depended on, as it is more 

 injured by tramping and early feeding than the grasses, and a 

 clover field will not produce half the feed in a season when 

 pastured short early that it will if allowed to bloom before the 

 stock is turned on it. One other common cause of loss is keep- 



