674 



FARMERS' REGISTER— GREEN CROPPING. 



Bein^ aware that strong prejudice and much in- 

 credulity existed on the subject of crossin<^, I 

 courted the attention of all the respectable farmers, 

 breeders, and feeders, in this neighborhood ; many 

 came to see her when first put up, and repeatedly 

 afterwards during the five months she was feeding, 

 and they all concurred in saying, she went on faster 

 than any beast they had ever seen. She never had 

 any oil cake. 



I have seen many excellent beasts bred from im- 

 proved short-horn bulls and long-horn cows ; in- 

 deed I never knew any one of these bulls put to 

 any cow where the produce was not superior to the 

 dam. But the cross which I advocate, and with 

 which I am best acquainted, is that with the Devon 

 cow. I have uniformly remarked, that each suc- 

 ceeding cross was attended with a proportionate 

 improvement in size, quality of flesh, and aptitude 

 to fatten ; in every instance they have shown them- 

 selves superior milkers, and stand to the pail till 

 within six or eight weeks of calving, and several 

 instances have come under my own knowledge 

 where they have never been clry since they first 

 calved. And so highly are they prized as milkers, 

 that a friend of mine, who hired out dairies, inform- 

 ed me, that the dairymen gave him nearly 21. per 

 cow, per year, more, for the half and three-quar- 

 ter breds, than they would give ibr cows of any 

 other breed. 



A friend of mine had abiout a dozen North De- 

 von cows, small in size, but nice in quality, and 

 from these he commenced, about twenty years 

 since, breeding with short-horn bulls. He has 

 since invariably used those bulls. With each suc- 

 ceeding cross, the stock have rapidly improved in 

 every essential, and the only trace of the Devons 

 which I could perceive when I last saw them about 

 two years since, was a peculiar richness in their 

 coloring. He breeds about thirty annually, and 

 generally sells his three years olds in the autumn, 

 at from 17Z. to 22/.; and I have known him sell in- 

 calf heifers to jobbers, in fairs, as high as thirty 

 guineas each. All his stock are superior milkers. 

 Here we have twenty years' experiment, and con- 

 tinued improvement Within the last eight years 

 I have sent many North Devon heifers to Ireland, 

 to friends residing in different counties, and some 

 of them occupying land of very inferior quality. I 

 also sent over two young Durham bulls, from the 

 stock of the Rev. Henry Berry, to cross them Avith. 

 They have all crossed them with short-horn bulls 

 at my recommendation, and the accounts they give 

 are most satisfactory. They say the tv/o years old, 

 half-breds, are as good as the three years old De- 

 vons, and are all good milkers. One ofthese bulls, by 

 Mr. Berry's Mynheer,* has been four times exhi- 

 bited in three different counties, and has each time 

 taken the first prize. He was last year sold for 

 sixty guineas, and is now serving cows at II. each. 

 If any testimony were wanting to corroborate 

 the statement in No. 26 of your Magazine, of the 

 benefit to be derived from Mr. Knight's method of 

 cultivating potatoes, I should be happy to add mine. 

 I have for several years been in the habit of plant- 

 ing the entire potato, and making the rows three 

 feet six inches apart, and have found this plan al- 

 ways succeed. I give them raw to my cattle; to 

 fatting beasts about 401bs. per day, with hay ; to 



store beasts, about half that quantity, with straw ; 

 and to my milking cows, 1 allow 241bs daily, with 

 hay. I have given them steamed, but found the 

 cattle did not do well after them when ])ut to grass. 

 After tlie raV ones, they thrive rapidly on grass. 

 I am, sir, your's, very obediently, 



C. H. BOLTON. 



Bnjndcrry , Jlhcrgavenmj, ? 

 Jane 30th, 1833. 3 



GREEN CHOPPING. 



E-i^tract from the British Farmers' Register. 



" There is another, and, I conceive, a most im- 

 portant subject, v/hich I am anxious to bring un- 

 der thcnoticeof the committee,! mean green crop- 

 ping, and the propriety of holding out encourage- 

 ment to the practice of it. Agi'iculture is divided 

 into three great branches — green cropping, white 

 cropping, and stock management, and they are 

 mutually and severally dependant for success on 

 each other. Without green cropping v/e cannot 

 raise weighty croi>s of grain, and without great 

 crops of grain, and consequently of straw to be 

 used as litter and partly as fodder in conjunction 

 witli the green food for feeding stock through the 

 winter months,* we cannot make dung ; and with- 

 out plenty of dung we cannot raise green crops, 

 and soon ; and it is such a disposition of stock and 

 crop, as shall cause the one to be instrumental in 

 promoting the prosperity of the other — a recipro- 

 city of services, as it were, which ultimately con- 

 verge in the general advancement of the whole, 

 wliich, in agriculture constitutes a system, which 

 system must be rigidly adhered to if any thing 

 like profit is to be looked for in farming. Green 

 cropping, which forms an important part of this 

 system, and which is, in fact, the basis of all good 

 husliandry, is what Ireland is most defective in ; 

 and, being defective in this, she cannot excel in the 

 other two great branches which have been men- 

 tioned — nor does she, for, instead of about five 

 kinds of green crops which might be grown, we 

 find only one taken , potatoes ; and we see white 

 ones substituted, and a number of these taken in 

 succession off the same ground — a practice which 

 has been reprobated by every good agriculturist, 

 and with reason, when the pernicious and ruinous 

 nature of it is considered. It will be allowed, that 

 on tillage firms, by which term I of course ex- 

 clude grazing ones, it is mainly by the sales of 

 grain and cattle that the occupier becomes enabled 

 to pay his rent; but neither one nor the other can bo 

 unilbrmly produced of good quality, without the 

 intervention of green crops. The fact is, that green 

 and white cropping must be alternate to be remu- 

 nerative, and this would throw one half of the ara- 

 ble land in the country under the cultivation of 

 these crops,t (common and Swedish turnips, beans. 



* Mynheer is a fall brother to the cow whose portrait 

 is given in this No. 



+ " On very heavy carse lands, where there is a diffi- 

 culty in growing turnijDs, and consequently of rotting 

 straAv, by feeding cattle through the winter months, this 

 purpose may be accomplished by growing a greater 

 breadth of clover, vetches, lucerne, &c. and feeding 

 cattle on these in summer, in straw yards or sheds, keep- 

 ing them well littered. 



f " Over the entire land binder crop in one season in the 

 north of Ireland, it may be stated that one-fourth of it 

 only is — or under present circumstances can be — in 

 green crop, (potatoes.) The other three-fourths are 

 under white crops, several of which are necessarily 

 taken in succession. 



