4-28 
Management of Cattle. 
some excuse foi- this close adherence to one line of blood ; but in 
the present day, when herds are so numerous, it cannot be diffi- 
cult to obtain a change of good and pure blood. In the larger 
herds several bulls are always kept, which gives the extensive 
breeder a great advantage over the smaller one, as he can put 
every cow to the bull best adapted for the correction of her defi- 
ciencies, and it is in this art that the great secret of breeding 
successfully consists. The Sliort-horn bulls are usually kept tied 
up or in loose boxes, and fed upon roots and hay, together with 
sometimes a little artificial food. They are cleaned, or, to use a 
stall phrase, groomed every day, and walked round a paddock 
adjoining the homestead for exercise. The cows in winter are 
generally tied up at milking and feeding time, and turned into a 
sheltered straw-yard during the day for exercise. Their food 
during this period of the year varies greatly in different counties: 
in some it consists chiefly of hay, in others a proportion of roots is 
added, whilst in others again a small quantity of meal or linseed- 
cake is also given. The latter article is said to produce milk 
and to occasion no unpleasant taste to the butter, if the small 
quantity of two or three pounds per diem be not exceeded. In 
summer the cows are kept upon the pastures, and as near home 
as possible for the convenience of milking. 
The age at which the heifers are bulled varies in different 
herds, some breeders putting them to the bull at eighteen months 
old, whilst others prefer allowing them to run until they com- 
plete their second year, under the impression that their growth is 
thus promoted and the general system more fully developed. 
When the time of calving approaches, the cow or heifer is re- 
moved from the herd, and in summer placed in a sheltered pad- 
dock near the homestead, and in a roomy box in the winter. 
After calving, if the cow is much exhausted, oatmeal -gruel and 
warm mashes are given with the sweetest and best hay, and she is 
only allowed to resume her usual food graduall}". Those whose 
chief object is to rear calves at the expense of the milk allow 
them to suck their dams for two or three months, and most un- 
questionably nothing tends so much to promote the health and 
growth of the young animal, and to fix the future health and 
constitution of the adult, than a judicious and generous treatment 
when young. It has been ascertained, that in young ruminating 
animals the milk passes at once into the fourth stomach, and does 
not undergo that complicated process of digestion which takes 
place in adult cattle ; and this arrangement points out to us that 
the food of a calf ought to be liquid, even when it is deprived of 
its mother's milk- The weaning takes place very gradually, and 
when new milk can no longer be spared, skimmed milk, thickened 
with linseed porridge or sago, is substituted; and a few turnips 
