Paddocks and Pastures. 25 



and are starving, will leave many a patch of seeded grass, 

 and the paddocks will be thickly dotted with their dung, 

 which means the following year bunches of rank, sour 

 herbage that will be shunned like a pestilence. Seventy -five 

 per cent, of the rough, distasteful grass common to pastures 

 devoted to grazing purposes, whether of cattle alone, or in 

 conjunction with horses, will, if investigated, be found to 

 result from piles of excrement left undisturbed. 



An alternative plan, to which the author confesses a 

 strong partiality, is a combination of the mowing machine 

 and cattle systems. This entails a departure from the 

 usual practice of running the horses and cattle together, 

 but has the advantage that it does away with the necessity 

 of selling cattle at a sacrifice, or " wintering " them at 

 heavy cost. 



In the Spring, when the dormant pastures wake to life 

 under the influence of April showers and the genial rays 

 of the sun, the mares are given the earliest paddocks. As 

 the season advances, and the growth becomes general in 

 all the paddocks, the cattle are brought from their winter 

 quarters, and allotted to certain paddocks, in sufficient 

 numbers to ensure that they will be able quickly to graze 

 them evenly and thoroughly over, while the growth is yet 

 new and sweet. This accomplished, they are hurried off 

 to perform the same office in other paddocks, before the 

 growth gets too far advanced. After the lapse of a few 

 days, to allow the cattle droppings to get " set," the vacated 

 paddocks will receive the attentions of men, armed with 

 long-handled shovels, who will scatter the droppings 

 thoroughly, special pains being taken to ensure the break- 

 ing up of the manure into the smallest possible fragments, 

 ' during distribution. Given genial weather, these paddocks 

 will in a surprisingly short time, be reclothed with a 



