319 
Management of Devon Cattle. 
on milking and calving in the ordinary course just in the same 
way as if only one man had an interest in them, the “ barren- 
ers,” and any which have failed to give satisfaction, being duly 
returned to the farmer, who fills their places with fresh cows or 
heifers. As he usually reserves a few cows for his own house 
dairy, he has one or two to spare as vacancies in the let dairy 
herd occur ; and his heifers are in turn coming on to fill the 
places of the cows drafted off to the butcher. 
The cows calve mostly from Christmas to the early part of 
May, and the owner takes at a fixed price all the heifer calves 
he wishes to have. The steer calves are eagerly bought up at 
good prices. A competent authority, well acquainted with the 
agriculture of Dorset, and having no personal interest in the 
Dorsetshire dairy business, estimates the average price of the 
bull calves to be reared as steers, taken by the purchasers at a 
week old, at two guineas each. This, checked by other 
estimates, appears to fairly represent the value. The heifer 
calves are fed by the dairyman upon skim-milk until passed 
over to the farmer, who allows, very commonly, a quarter’s rent 
of the cow, as the value of the calf when delivered to him ; but 
as some farmers who possess herds of superior breeding, and 
occasionally rear a bull or two for sale or home use, desire the 
choicest heifer calves to be rather more generously kept, they 
arrange with the dairyman for extra feeding and allow propor- 
tionately more as the value of the calves receiving it. The farmer 
bears all risks of the cows and finds all food excepting cake, 
which the dairyman, if he wishes to use it, buys at his own cost, 
unless by special arrangement the farmer agrees to pay a portion 
of the value. The food of the cows, of course, is mainly com- 
prised in the allotment of land to the dairyman’s use, the acreage 
being reckoned according to the number of cows let to him. 
III. Bull-bbeeding and Exhibition. 
Both the breeders of dairy Devons and the breeders of Devon 
grazing stock have occasional recourse to what are called the 
bull-breeding herds, for sires qualified to keep the breed up 
to its recognised standard of merit. These are herds in which 
the breeder’s ostensible aim is to maintain by selection and man- 
agement the highest refinement of type, the model form, and the 
truest symmetry in the flesh parts as well as in the structure of 
the frame. 
As owners of “ bull-breeding ” herds are mostly either them- 
selves exhibitors, or breeders of animals exhibited by purchasers, 
management for competition in the show-yard may be con- 
