Manafj/evient of Cattle. 
429 
or carrots cut siniiU, willi some sweet hay, arc placed in a trough 
to accustom the young animal to its future food. At six or eight 
months all nursing generally ceases, and if this occurs in summer 
time the calves are turned upon young clover layers to pick for 
themselves. In winter, upon some farms they are kept in well- 
sheltered paddocks, with a good hovel to run under, and supplied 
with roots, to which the best hay and occasionally a small quantity 
of linseed-cake, or miller's offal, are added. In other situations a 
dry straw-yard, well shedded, makes excellent winter-quarters for 
the yearling calves. Exposure to wet and cold is very injurious 
to young stock, and they never thrive well unless comfortably and 
warmly housed. It is not meant that young cattle should be 
treated like the stall-fed beast, and almost deprived of exercise, 
for such a system would be very injurious, and would retard the 
proper development of the organs of the body — exercise, warmth, 
and nutritious food of the proper sort being the three most im- 
portant features in the management of young stock. 
As Short-horns attain an early maturity, a great number of the 
steers are slaughtered at two and a half or three years old. Some 
breeders prefer keeping them another year, and where there are 
inferior pastures for thein to run over, it may answer very well to 
do so. The most celebrated Short-horn breeders have, however, 
such a demand for their bull calves at high prices, that every 
promising calf, if his pedigree be right, is left uncut ; so that the 
number of steers to be grazed is comparatively small. It is not 
from the herds of our highest bred Durhams that we must look 
for a supply of oxen to stock our pastures in summer, or our 
feeding-yards in the winter, for it is well known that steers of the 
true Durham kind are seldom if ever exhibited for sale at any of 
our large fairs, and the breeders of them generally prefer grazing 
or stall-feeding them at home. It is from the herds of the old 
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Short-horns, crossed and improved by 
bulls of the Durham breed, that the main supply of grazing ani- 
mals is annually obtained. The breeders in those counties are 
now fully alive to the importance of kind hair and good flesh in a 
feeding beast, and the results which in a few years have been pro- 
duced by judicious crossing from the improved breed are quite 
astonishing. The difficulty of successful crossing has been al- 
luded to, but those remarks were only intended to apply to ani- 
mals of pure blood, as there can be no doubt that the most 
marked improvement almost invariably follows the introduction 
of a well-bred male animal of good quality into a herd of rough 
cows. This system is now almost universal in our northern 
counties, and the old race is fast disappearing. In several dis- 
tricts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, as well as in other counties, 
there are many very fine herds of these improving Short-horns • 
