190 WESTMORLAND AGRICULTURE, 1800— 1900 



for the first week, afterward twice a day, and the milk reduced to 

 skim, to which is added a little gruel till grass time. The males are 

 steered when about three months old ; this operation is one of the 

 innovations of the century, as in the beginning and indeed up till 

 about 1825 it was the usual practice to send all bull calves to market 

 within a few weeks of their birth. The middle of May is about the 

 usual time for turning the calves out, first during the day and then 

 altogether ; they get in addition skim milk or porridge once or twice 

 a day, they are taken up at nights about the middle or latter end of 

 September, and soon after, according to the weather, are kept in 

 altogether, but turned out for an hour or two each day. They are fed 

 on hay and porridge till they are about 12 months old. The bullocks 

 are sold off when they are 9 to 12 months old. On the high fell farms 

 the heifers are turned out the following spring on the high allotments, 

 in many instances in very poor condition, on the lower farms the young 

 stock have turnips and straw and follow the cows on the pastures. 

 The cows are usually sold when coming with their third or fourth calf — 

 much younger stock being kept than was the custom twenty years 

 ago, early maturity being aimed at, which at the same time involves 

 less risk and loss from disease. 



C. Webster wrote in 1868 that " there are very many homesteads 

 very deficient in proper accommodation for man and beast, antient 

 and delapidated, low, damp and ill-ventilated. . . . The head 

 room of the cow-house is generally much too low, the floor roughly 

 paved, very uneven, undrained, with stagnant pools of liquid manure. 

 The poor animals, huddled closely together, must suffer the certain 

 consequences of dirt, deficient light, and foul air." 



On the hill farms the buildings are very Uttle changed, low, dark 

 and damp, light, air and ventilation being conspicuous by their absence. 

 " Nine out of ten of the calf boxes or hovels might have been taken 

 for some model dungeon," writes John Noble in his Prize Essay on 

 " Breeding and Rearing of Cattle " in 1878, " while the shippons 

 are little better. Here are cows tied with heads to a foul, damp, 

 wall, to breathe over again the same air many times in succession, . . . 

 while behind the cattle dung and urine stand in pools ankle deep, 

 unless removed two or three times a day." No bedding is evef given 

 to the cattle, they lie on the hard cobble-paved floors. 



