



REARING AND FEEDING OF ANIMALS. 



The skin of the Devon, notwithstanding his curly hair, is 

 exceedingly mellow and elastic. Graziers know that there is 

 not a more important point than this. When the skin can be 

 easily raised from the hips, it shows that there is room to set 

 on fat below. 



The skin is thin rather than thick. Its appearance of thick- 

 ness arises frorn the curly hair with which it is covered, and 

 curly in proportion to the condition and health of the animal. 

 Good judges of these cattle speak of these curls as running like 

 little ripples of wind on a pond of water. Some of these cat- 

 tle have the hair smooth, but then it should be fine and glossy. 

 Those with curled hair are somewhat more hardy, and fatten 

 more kindly. The favourite colour is a blood red. This is 

 supposed to indicate purity of breed; but there are many good 

 cattle approaching almost to a chestnut hue, or even a bay 

 brown. If the eye is clear and good, and the skin mellow, the 

 paler colours will bear hard work and fatten as well as others; 

 but a beast with a pale skin, and hard under the hand, and the 

 eye dark and dead, will be a sluggish worker, and an unprofit- 

 able feeder. Those, however, that are of a yellow colour, are 

 said to be subject to steal (diarrhoea). 



Some breeders object to the slightest intermixture of white 

 not even a star upon the forehead is allowed yet a few good 

 oxen have large distant patches of white; but if the colours run 

 into each other, the beasts are condemned as of a mongrel and 

 valueless breed. 



These are the principal points of a good Devonshire ox; but 

 he used to be, perhaps he is yet, a little too flat-sided, and the 

 rump narrowed too rapidly behind the hip bones; he was not 

 sufficiently ribbed home, or there was too much space between 

 the hip bones and the last rib; and altogether he was too light 

 for some tenacious and strong soils. The cut of the working 

 ox, on page 338, contains the portrait of one embodying 

 almost every good point of which we have spoken. 



Mr. WESTERN has kindly enabled us here to add another 

 portrait from his farm. It is a son of the bull given on page 

 337, and is a faithful representation of an ox beginning to fat- 

 ten, but his characteristic points not yet concealed. Mr. 

 WESTERN has carefully preserved this breed unmixed for the 

 last thirty years, and all the cattle that he fattens are Devons: 

 he rarely uses them for the plough. 



A selection from the most perfect animals of the true breed 

 the bone still small and the neck fine, but the brisket deep 

 and wide, and down to the knees, and not an atom of flatness 

 all over the side or one cross, and only one with the Here- 

 ford, and that stealthily made these have improved the 



