2G4 
Report on the Farm-Prize Competition, 1870. 
The roots are grown witli half-inch bones and superphosphate, 
and all the farmyard manure is, as a rule, put on the young- 
seeds. 
Under the above system of cropping and manuring we found a 
remarkably clean farm and extremely good crops, even on the 
poorest land, with the exception of the roots, which this year 
have to some extent failed, and in other cases were so backward 
that it is doubtful whether they can now make a crop. 
Great pains are taken on the poor pastures to eradicate, bj 
constant spudding, the innumerable thistles which they produce, 
and on all the grass land there is a very neat system of manage- 
ment. 
A small dairy of 15 remarkably good shorthorns is kept, 
and the produce is all reared. The females go into the dairy, 
and the steers are fed off at 3-years old. Calves are also bought, 
reared, and made off fat at 3-years old. About 90 head of cattle, 
of all ages, are wintered, and all have cake or corn. 
Two hundred Cotswold ewes are put to the ram, and they 
usually produce about 250 lambs. About 60 ewe hoggets are 
reserved to renew the flock, and the remainder, together with the 
draft ewes, are all made fat during the winter on turnips, with 
corn or cake, and are generally shorn and sent to market early 
in the spring. 
Mr. Craddock does not keep many pigs, and has only three 
breeding sows, whose produce is all fatted off. 
The districts through which the Judges travelled and the 
generality of the farms which they inspected have not given 
them a very favourable impression of the cart-horses of the neigh- 
bourhood. They are generally undersized, ill-bred, and slow 
animals — badly groomed, and badly fed. The natural conse- 
quence is, that in too many instances three horses are put to do 
the work of two. This, however, is by no means the case at 
Lyneham, for I have seldom seen a better lot of horses, many 
of them being of considerable value, and all in the best possible 
condition. The admirable cultivation of the farm is a sufficient 
proof that the horses are kept for work and not for show ; and 
Mr. Craddock's example with respect to the management of 
horses, as in many other respects, might be followed with ad- 
vantage by many farmers in Oxfordshire. 
Altogether Mr. Craddock's farm exhibits several points of 
management which are full of instruction, notably, a sensible 
adaptation of different systems of cropping to each variety of soil; 
the growth of clean and good crops under such system of manage- 
ment; and the attention paid to his pasture land, which, whether 
good or bad, has had labour employed upon it, and has been 
improved. 
