Management of Devon Cattle. 321 
future progeny ; whilst, as regards the show-yard, the loss of the 
robust character, and the substitution of flabby fat for good 
flesh, ought to tell against an animal when it goes into the ring. 
From want of sufficient exercise, too, the legs become weak and 
crooked. Now the end of bull-breeding is the production of 
sires able to do real good ; to give muscle whilst they impart 
the readiness to fatten ; so that the stock of those sires may be 
fit for either the home grazier or the colonial or foreign feeder, 
and equal to the task of finding their living, whether their 
destiny leave them in native pastures or take them to lands 
where they have to roam in search of sustenance. There is also 
the dairy side of the question ; and it is needless to show why 
bulls for dairy herds should be at least as healthily reared as the 
bulls for the steer-breeder’s use. 
A very good custom is that of giving the calves a run out in 
a yard by day for an hour or two after they are a month or six 
weeks old. Early calves also do well if allowed to run in a 
paddock by day in May ; and in June the heifer calves may, and 
often do, remain out at night. A paddock run for young bulls 
a few hours every day during their first summer is excellent 
for healthy development. 
Some breeders prefer to turn the cow and calf together, and 
let the calf help itself. This system will commend itself to 
those who wish to follow nature as far as they can in the arti- 
ficial conditions of domestication. It tends to keep the calf’s 
underline straighter than when the meals are fewer and heavier, 
because the food, taken oftener and in smaller quantities, does 
not swell the paunch so much. The assumption is, moreover, 
that food taken frequently at the bidding of the appetite, gives 
a larger proportion of nourishment to the calf and a smaller 
proportion of waste than food taken twice a day in quantities 
beyond the animal's powers of absorption into the blood within 
the time in which the food remains available. 
We need not here further linger upon the calf s first summer. 
In the following winter the heifer calves (or quey calves, or cow 
calves, as they are variously called) are placed in yards and fed 
upon hay and roots, and they have, or should have, a daily run 
out, the bull calves, and any intended for feeding as steers, 
having more liberal treatment. In this treatment we are for 
the moment losing sight of the calves selected for exhibition (if 
such there be in the herd), and are considering only the future 
breeding stock and the surplus males disposed of eventually as 
steers, either store or fat. In the spring next ensuing, the 
heifer calves are turned out to grass as soon as the grass-growth 
and the weather permit ; and in the succeeding autumn they are 
