86 CO-OPEKATION IN DANISH AGKICULTURE 



the States General to impose a high import duty on Danish 

 cattle, and in 1770 their importation was totally prohibited. 

 Danish cattle were then sent to the rich marsh lands in Holstein 

 to be fattened for market, and then sold to the Hanse towns, 

 but the prices realised were not so high as before. Cattle 

 plague also and other misfortunes helped to reduce the export. 

 While at the beginning of the eighteenth century the export 

 amounted to about 50,000 steers, it was at the end of the century 

 : barely 5000 to 8000. The large estates gradually left off 

 fattening steers, and took to dairy farming instead. The stock 

 of cattle was reduced, and much grass land was turned into 

 arable land for corn growing. Jutland kept on producing steers 

 longer than the islands, but the farmers sold the steers as store 

 cattle to be fattened on the Holstein marshes. In 1774 there 

 were, besides calves, about 500,000 head of cattle in Denmark. 

 The great agricultural reforms at the end of the eighteenth 

 century enabled the smaller farmers, that is the peasants, to 

 increase their stock, and in 1838 the number is given as 850,000, 

 but the quality of them had very much deteriorated. This was 

 particularly the case with the peasants' cattle which formed 

 the great majority. The cattle were looked upon as "a 

 necessary evil," kept partly in order to convert hay and straw 

 into manure and to get a scanty supply of milk for home use. 

 The aim of agriculture was corn-growing ; the soil had been 

 enriched in the previous period, and by marling, draining, 

 better rotation and improved implements, the manurial residue 

 in the soil was made available, so that the fields yielded good 

 corn crops without the addition of much manure, while cattle 

 breeding was neglected. 



The peasants had no idea of cattle breeding or of the 

 points of good cattle. The cattle dealers bought the best 

 animals, and the inferior stock left was used for breeding./ 

 Both bulls and cows were allowed to breed at too young an 

 age, cows in calf were badly treated, and young stock insuffi- 

 ciently nourished. The poorer the district the worse were the 

 cattle. Such was the state of cattle breeding among the 

 peasants at the end of the eighteenth, and the first half of the 

 nineteenth, century. But before the middle of last century 

 the necessity of producing more manure to maintain the yield 



