BULLOCK FATTENING 83 



has got his harvest over and set about his wheat seed- 

 ing, he moves his sheep on to the turnips and begins 

 to fill his yards with cattle. Sometimes these may 

 have been grazing on the east coast marshes during 

 the summer, but in the main they are brought straight 

 out of the market, often at big prices, for the Norfolk 

 grazier aims at a very finished product, and wants 

 a good foundation. The feeding is liberal, unlimited 

 turnips a hundredweight or so per head, cake and 

 corn even up to ten pounds a day, and this for a long 

 period, because the best men look to make 30 a 

 head for their fat cattle. 



How such feeding pays or has paid for the last half- 

 dozen years is a flat mystery ; except when lucky 

 buying or selling has secured the turn of the market 

 in its favour. No strict accounts accessible to us have 

 shown a steady and consistent profit for this fattening 

 of bought stores. The ordinary answer is that the 

 profit lies in the dung ; but if the men who evade the 

 issue in this fashion would only keep books to show 

 how much dung they make and at what cost, provided 

 that the hay and the straw and the turnips consumed 

 are given any value at all, the results would un- 

 commonly surprise them. Probably the best arguments 

 for the Norfolk system were those advanced by a 

 farmer we visited, himself one of the most determined 

 fatteners of bullocks in the county, who is daunted by 

 no expense to attain the best stores or to bring them 

 up to the highest condition for sale. You always find, 

 he said, the most successful farmers are the heaviest 

 feeders ; the starving niggling man with but little stock 

 may always be known by the state of his land. His 

 next argument was that it is impossible to show that 

 any single operation on a farm pays by itself, it is the 

 whole system taken together which succeeds or fails. 



