On the Feeding of Stock. 
act ultimately upon liis own judgment. The course taken, there- 
fore, was in the main such as approved itself to the mind of the 
practical man, not the experimental farmer. 
Stock. — I give the precedence to this branch of farm manao^'e- 
ment, because of late years it has been the surest staff on which 
the . farmer could lean, because rotations and cultivation must 
accommodate themselves to this object, and because though all 
are conscious that we can no longer rely as heretofore on the 
cot-n-crops for paying the rent, perhaps none of us have been able 
sufficiently to throw off the trammels of custom and association, 
which led him to look for profit first to the stack rather than to 
the stall ; a view which the unreasonable custom of taxing the 
turnip-crop with the duty of doing all the scavenger's work for 
tlie whole rotation, besides leaving a dressing of manure behind 
without any allowance made, tended greatly to foster. 
With regard to stock, both soil and situation led me to look 
to the sheep rather than the ox, and very little examination of 
the results of feeding sufficed to justify this preference. 
The custom of the district, which consists mainly of arable- 
land and grows a great breadth of straw, was, and still is, to buy 
lean beasts in the autumn at fairs, and either to fat or sell them 
fresh in the spring. I have tried this system in many ways, but 
could hardly ever arrive at a satisfactory result. At the very 
best, the price made by the bullock when fat only amounted to 
four-fifths of the purchase-money and cost of food on the average 
of a lot, but more frequently only to three-fourths or two-thirds. 
If I went into a fair I had a dread of bringing home pleuro- 
pneumonia as the consequence of heating and chills from over- 
<lriving, if not as the result of direct contagion ; or else of 
buying beasts that had been so unequally kept that they would 
not answer the whip when put to good food. Stock bought at 
auctions on farms of established character made exorbitant 
prices, and even then, perhaps, the event proved that the animals 
had, in anticipation of the sale, been too much pampered for 
steady feeding. If the stock were " held over " and sent out to 
graze in summer, a risk of infection was incurred, and no 
security obtained for an adequate and steady supply of feed. 
The conclusion, therefore, at which I arrived, was to keep no 
more beasts than I found necessary for making my straw into 
good manure, and, as far as might be, to rear my own stock from 
the first, buying nothing but the very best calves that I could 
procure, with the conviction that a difference of 5^. in the price 
of a calf will often put 5Z. on to the value of a good 3-year-old 
beast, the food being the same. 
These calves are kept in small lots from the time of weaning 
