706 = 440 Pastoral Husbandry. 
cake. Grass-farms are known to me, where, from the larger 
number of cattle now required to consume the greatly increased 
summer production of grass, due to improvement of and increase 
in the acreage of permanent pasture, the present buildings will 
not shelter the whole of the cattle. 
The young cattle are brought through their first two winters 
without being housed, and by the aid of a moderate allowance of 
cake are kept quite healthy and growing, and are wintered at a 
less cost than if they were housed, if the interest on the outlay 
required to erect buildings and the cost of straw for litter be 
estimated. 
Some agricultural writers have pointed to this system as one 
of the blots on English agriculture ; but this is by no means, in 
all cases, the fact. 
The plan of allowing store or feeding animals to lose con- 
dition for want of some extra food is indefensible on economical 
grounds. Practical owners of cattle appraise the value of their 
cattle from time to time ; and if, allowing for variations in 
market-prices, an increase of value in animals, not giving milk, 
is not apparent, they know that their keep has been utterly 
wasted. 
There is in England much rich grass-land, especially in some 
of our river valleys, which has not been ploughed for gene- 
rations, and is very well adapted for fattening cattle in the 
summer and autumn ; and on such land this is more profitable 
than rearing young cattle. If suitable cattle can be bought in 
the spring, and made fat and sold before the grass season is over, 
there is no necessity for providing a supply of dry fodder, ant' 
there is little labour involved in the system. 
In the dairy districts a large number of cows no longer de- 
sirable for dairy purposes — from being bad milkers, or provins 
barren, or having aborted — are sold in the spring and autumn 
and their place supplied by others. The greater number o i 
them have a cross of the Shorthorns ; and when well selected 
of good flesh and young, having had only one or two calves 
they are very desirable animals to feed. v | 
Of late years, some of the best managers have given oak'' 
to their cattle when feeding on the grass, and, if given witl 
judgment to well-selected animals, it is nevermore profitabl 
used. i 
A mixture of equal parts of linseed- and decorticated cotton j 
cake is found a most suitable food with grass, the cotton-caki 
checking the purgative nature of the grass. A daily allowanc 
of this mixture, commencing with 4 lbs., increasing to 0 lbs 
as the beasts approach ripeness, and costing from 2*'. Qd. t 
3s. Qd. per head per week, generally pays well. The beasts es 
