178 
The Agi'iculture of GJamorganshirp. 
poorer farms, and many nondescripts are also to be found in 
this part of the county. 
In the best herds the calves are reared with great care, in 
many instances by the pail or hand ; but in pedigree herds they 
are allowed to suckle their dams for a longer or shorter period. 
At the Cowbridge Christmas market a number of Herefords 
and crosses at 3i years old have of late years been realising 
from 40/. to 50/. per head. Great care is taken by the best 
managers to keep the horned stock in a progressive state from 
the time of their birth until they are finished off for the butcher. 
In such cases cattle are comfortably housed in winter and well 
attended to, but there are also many examples where the young 
steers and heifers are allowed to be out in the fields all the 
winter. The general mildness of the climate enables this to be 
done with comparative impunity, when care is taken that the 
cattle have sufficient to eat. In many instances this practice is 
a matter of necessity, not of choice, on account of insufficient 
shedding accommodation. In other cases the practice is fol- 
lowed from a notion of economy ; but it is very questionable 
policy, seeing that a large portion of the food consumed is 
taken up in merely maintaining the necessary warmth of the 
animal's system, so that if any progressive growth is made it is 
necessarily slow. 
Sheep. — This part of the county has long been noted for the 
superior management of its sheep stock ; but very serious losses 
were sustained in 1879 and subsequent wet seasons by fluke or 
liver-rot, so that the ardour of the flockmaster has been greatly 
damped, and the district does not now seem half stocked with 
sheep. Cotswolds have been the favourite breed, especially in 
times when long-stapled wools brought a good price. » There 
has also been for many years a mixture of pure and cross-bred 
Hampshire, Leicester, and Oxford Down Sheep, and other 
crosses. Though in several instances a regular breeding-flock 
is kept, the majority of the farmers keep a flying stock by 
purchasing draft ewes in the autumn. A few of the lambs are 
sometimes sold off fat, but the more general practice is to keep 
them on during the following winter on roots and cake, and 
dispose of them in the spring as fat tegs. This system answered 
well so long as sound ewes could be purchased, but great risks 
in this respect have existed during the past five or six years. 
In all cases fluke was not wholly imported into the locality, for 
a rather considerable area of undrained land, even in this 
favoured part of the county, is unsound for sheep. It is the 
custom throughout the county to shear the lambs in the early 
part of summer, and experience proves that they thrive better 
than when they have a heavy coat to carry in so humid a 
