382 SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT. 



October ; but two-year-olds are tied up, to be specially 

 prepared for the Christmas market, about the end of 

 August or the first week of September. When two-year- 

 old bullocks are casting their teeth, they get their turnips 

 cut, and, along with the turnips, 2 lbs. a day of cotton- 

 cake until their teeth are up so that they can again eat 

 the turnips, either yellows or Swedes. It is when they 

 are rising three years old that I finally tie up my bullocks 

 to prepare them for the Christmas market. When they 

 are tied up at the end of August or beginning of Sep- 

 tember, before turnips are ready, I provide an abundant 

 supply of tares mixed with oats, pease and beans, to feed 

 with. Such a mixed food, after the oats have come into 

 the ear, is a very valuable diet. About the middle of 

 September, in favourable circumstances, early turnips will 

 be ready for use, and two diets a day will improve the 

 feed. When the tares are done, which is generally about 

 the beginning of October, I give 2 lbs. of cotton-cake a 

 day to each animal, and three small feeds of turnips. A 

 fortnight or three weeks later, a feed of bruised oats is 

 added to the cotton-cake. By the beginning of November 

 Swede turnips are ready for use, and that, along with a 

 slight increase of bruised oats, as the state of the animal 

 seems to require in order to thorough ripeness of fattening, 

 constitutes the feeding until the animals are either sold 

 or forivarded to the London Christmas market. I thus 

 sell my polled bullocks at two rising three years old. 

 My weights average from 8 cwts. to 8^ cwts., though I 

 have at times had animals as high as 9 cwts. or even 

 10 cwts. In my experience the poUed Scot is the best 

 selling animal in good times, and the best selling animal 

 in bad times, and, as a rule, I get £2 a head, or even 

 more, for polled animals than for crosses of the same 

 weight ; and I am given to understand that the butcher 

 can well enough afford that sum extra. I lately heard a 

 statement of a leading Aberdeen butcher, that he could 



