Tlie Management of a Shorthorn Herd. 
393 
and were not brouglit in at night until about the 11th of 
November (Martinmas, the traditional time for lying indoors 
in the district), and in winter they went out regularly through 
the day, and had their one feed of turnips laid out in a grass- 
field, after which they were allowed to regale themselves on 
chaff in the barn-yard. This, with liberal supplies of good 
meadow hay, was their sole diet. Linseed-cake and other 
artificial foods they never tasted. 
There is no recipe for the production of cows that can fill 
the dairy, breed the primest steers, and make good beef when 
they have done breeding ; all must be done by judgment 
acquired only in practice. But there are certain rules which 
cannot be set aside with impunity. If, for instance, heifers be 
forced for show or sale, or to make " flat-catchers," all chance 
of developing their milking properties should be abandoned at 
the outset. Indeed, such over-fed brutes rarely make good 
breeders of beef-stock, inasmuch as the constitution is sapped, 
an unhealthy tendency to grossness is induced, and the repro- 
ductive powers are consequently impaired. On the other hand, 
starveling heifers, I have already assumed, can never regain the 
muscular tissue once lost while the frame is growing ; they 
may make milkers, but they cannot make fairly representative 
grazers. The happy medium of liberal but not extravagant 
keep ; early use of the milk-secreting organs by early breeding ; 
frequent and clean milking, to stimulate the flow of milk ; 
especial attention to the fore-bag in heifers at calving ; and the 
use of such foods as support and sustain the animal while 
increasing the yield of milk, are among the means of making 
dairy-and-grazing Shorthorns. The land also has much to do 
with this. Some lands are quite unfit for the rearing of stock 
intended for the dairy, while other lands cannot grow good 
beef-cattle. If the intention is to try to combine milk and beef 
on either sort of land, artificial feeding must be the resort ; but 
the best policy of the farmer, doubtless, is to breed for milk or 
beef, or the two combined, according to the capability of his 
land and the market facilities of his district. As a rule, the 
man who tries to breed a milking type of Shorthorn falls back 
upon the old unimproved v»edge-shape — light, shallow, narrow 
fore-quarters, deeper and wider hind-quarters, plenty of paunch, 
and a deficiency of thigh. This may do for the dairyman, but 
it will not suit the grazier or the butcher. With those who say 
that in order to breed the best butchers' beasts you must utterly 
sacrifice milk, the traditions of Northumberland are entirely at 
variance. They instruct us that in order to have a dairy cow 
of even the first class, it is not absolutely necessary to have 
