The Management of a Shorthorn Herd. 
389 
The calves are trained to eat oilcake and sliced turnips as 
soon as possible, and are weaned at from seven to eight months 
old. The young bulls which are to be sold in autumn generally 
get some oilcake in the fields during the later summer, and the 
heifer-calves depend upon their mothers and the grass. 
The heifers are generally put to the bull so as to calve at from 
twenty-four to twenty-six months old. This early breeding tends 
to reduce size, and must be met with liberal feeding. When, 
however, the breeding is put off to another season, the risk 
of permanent infertility is greatly increased ; and a year's rest 
at three or four years old generally enables the animal to come to 
its full size. 
Little or no trouble is experienced from the infertility of bulls, 
which are kept as much as possible in even condition, neither 
very fat nor very lean ; but heavy losses arise from cows 
slipping their calves. It has been noticed that casting is the 
more common in years when there is a large supply of turnips 
and a small crop of straw. Whether this is from any real con- 
nection of cause and effect, or whether the assumption that such 
is the case is a too hasty conclusion — post hoc ergo propter hoc — 
-drawn from the insufficient evidence of several remarkable coin- 
cidences, the Aberdeenshire stock-owners are quite sound in 
their practice of noting those coincidences, and so varying the 
keep of their cows, in seasons of the kind, as to endeavour to 
counteract the possible evil effects of a superabundance of 
turnips and a scarcity of straw. " Foot-and-mouth " distemper, 
that undermining destroyer of our herds, has wasted those of 
Aberdeenshire extensively and repeatedly; and here, as elsewhere, 
much of the abortion and barrenness of cows was traceable to 
this malady, which townspeople and the public generally sup- 
posed to be a mild, harmless complaint, because, forsooth, it 
seldom killed outright the visible stock upon the land, but 
Avhich the breeder and the grazier knew to be one of their worst 
enemies. This trouble, however, now that the working of the 
Cattle Diseases Act has reduced it to very narrow limits, is 
almost forgotten. 
\ ery few calves are lost, either at birth or afterwards ; but 
•" quarter-ill " is in some places still troublesome to the farmers. 
A small daily allowance of oilcake, and the use of an issue 
{a seton) in the dewlap of the calf, is usually found sufficient to 
check it. The severe climate causes much rheumatism among 
young bulls, and it develops much in the way that the disease 
known as joint-felon does in Yorkshire. Moderate feeding and 
regular exercise are accounted the best preventives. 
By the most experienced and most successful breeders much 
