A MIDLAND DAIRY FARM. 39 



cheese is made at home from March 1 to December 1, and 

 for the other three months milk is sold. About twenty 

 calves are annually reared, half heifers, half bullocks. The 

 former are brought in to the dairy at 2 years old, and the 

 bullocks are sold at about 20 months old. . The summer 

 stock is heavier than the winter stock, both in beasts and 

 sheep. During the summer there are the dairy cows and a 

 few feeding beasts, say, in all fifty besides twenty IJ-year 

 old heifers and bullocks, twenty rearing calves, and one bull. 

 Out of the dairy cows the worst milkers (some six or eight) 

 are made fat before Christmas. When the fat beasts and 

 the 1^-year old bullocks have been cleared out, instead of 

 about ninety head, there remain about seventy for wintering. 

 These are fed on cut straw and hay, pulped roots, rice meal, 

 and oilcakes, either of decorticated cotton cake or linseed. 



The sheep are a more uncertain quantity than the cattle. 

 and are reduced or increased, as there is room and food for 

 them. On the average in the summer there are from 150 

 to 200 head, including lambs, and in winter the stock is 

 reduced to forty in-lamb ewes. Their lambs are not 

 wintered, but are sold either fat or as stores. Shropshires 

 are kept, and in 1882 all the males were sold as ram lambs, 

 and the ewe lambs for store. 



Pigs are not bred, but from eighty to ninety are annually 

 made fat, being bought in at about 55s., and sold out, after 

 being fed on whey and ricemeal, at about 5 10s. per head. 



About 50 worth of mineral superphosphate and nitrate 

 of soda are annually bought ; and about ^450 worth of 

 cattle food are annually bought; half decorticated cotton 

 and linseed oilcakes and half ricemeal. The actual amount 

 of livestock, on August 20, 1883, was as follows : Forty- 

 seven in-milk and in-calf cows, of which 4 are nearly fat ; 



