22 The Practical Stud Groom. 



200 acres were actually occupied by the inares, the remain- 

 ing 50 acres would be in various stages of culture, such as 

 being mown, manured, rolled and harrowed, according to 

 their various requirements. With 250 acres of pasture to 

 be kept in prime grazing condition it is obvious that the 

 mowing machine would have to be pretty busy to prevent 

 the grass in any paddock reaching the seeding stage. The 

 cut grass would also have to be raked up and carted off to 

 the compost heap, where it would be mixed with loam, 

 road scrapings, lime, cow-dung, ashes from burnt hedge 

 trimmings, etc. This compost heap, at the expiration of a 

 couple of years, would be ready to be returned to certain 

 paddocks as a thin top dressing, calculated not to force a 

 growth of rank sour herbage, but to furnish an ideal root 

 soil. The above plan, supplemented by a systematic and 

 constant gathering and removal of the horse droppings, 

 would go very near to ensuring "ideal" horse pasturage. 

 An alternative plan, less costly and proportionately 

 less efficacious, would be grazing cattle and sheep with the 

 horses. The theory underlying this plan, is that the cattle 

 and sheep eat down the grasses rejected by the horses, and, 

 incidentally, return to the soil manure less pernicious in its 

 effect than that of horse droppings. An ounce of practice 

 is said to be worth a ton of theory. Be that as it may, the 

 author, after many years' observation, and with the 

 courage of conviction, makes bold to say that the plan 

 advocated by many accepted authorities of running horses, 

 cattle and sheep simultaneously in paddocks, though 

 perhaps sound in theory, works out very unsatisfactorily 

 in practice. The simplicity of the plan is most alluring. 

 The horses take the short sweet grass, the cattle the coarse 

 herbage, and the sheep obligingly deal with weeds such as 

 plantains and blackheads. But alas ! in practice, the 



