Paddocks and Pastures. 29 



or go to form bone for the sucking calves, instead of being 

 returned to the soil for the benefit of the young racehorses 

 that are to be. 



But as very few stud farms are blessed with " ideal " 

 pastures, the question of manure cannot be quite ignored. 

 The ideal plan of operations would seem to be to buy the 

 required number of two year old steers in the Spring, and 

 during Summer and Autumn never to lose sight of the 

 fact that their chief role is to act as scavengers to the horses. 

 When the last paddock has been bared of its refuse grass, 

 retire them to the stalls or yards, to revel in oil-cakes, 

 roots, and all the other items that comprise the stall feeding 

 menu, till ordered to the slaughter house, leaving behind 

 them a generous pile of rich manure, to be carted away to 

 the compost heap, and there mixed with lime, wood ashes, 

 loam, etc., to await the day when it should be applied in 

 not too liberal quantity to some deteriorating paddock. 

 The practice of winter stall feeding has the further advan- 

 tage that it ensures that the paddocks are free of cattle 

 during the season of the year when their presence would 

 inflict serious and permanent injury to the pasture, owing 

 to their "poaching" or trampling the dormant herbage. 



As to sheep, they are out of place on a stud farm. Their 

 natural habitat is on the mountains and the foothills, where 

 the shorter-growing and sweeter grasses thrive. The horse, 

 too, in a wild state favours the foothills, steppes, and bench 

 land of the prairies, for the same reason. On the average 

 stud farm the problem is what to do with the long coarse 

 grass ; the horses generally take care of the short. Putting a 

 flock of such close nibbling animals as sheep on to a pasture 

 would merely increase the difficulty of the problem. Again, 

 the hill-loving sheep, when confined to small enclosures of 

 rich land in any large number, is subject to a greater variety 



