Management of Devon Oattle. 
323 
Mr. R. <T. Stranger, whose three generations of family 
experience in Devon breeding and management at his present 
residence, the Court House, North Mol ton, link him with breeders 
of the time when the Devon had no recorded history, keeps his 
cattle in the same plain way, within a narrow range of variation in 
details. Occasionally he will feed an animal for show, and have 
the satisfaction of prize-winning ; but such instances are excep- 
tional. His herd is composed of steady-going breeders, and 
their produce reared in the ordinary course of farming in that 
district. A neighbour of his, Mr. Charles Yoysey, of Upcott, who 
combines the breeding of cobs and ponies and of Exmoor sheep 
with steer-breeding and dairy farming, and supplies butter to 
the town of Ilfracombe, has part of his stock at home and part 
out on allotments upon Exmoor, where the Devons certainly 
learn to be hardy ; he used to summer-graze his home-bred steers 
and sell them out, grass-fed, in August and September, when 
they were 2^ years old, at about 20 1. each ; but he has recently 
changed his practice a little and disposed of them as “ stores.” 
A little to westward of this district, that is Barnstaple way, 
Earl Fortescue’s seat, Castle Hill, is the home of a good herd of 
Devons, kept more liberally, but still with a view to the main- 
tenance of as good a milk-yield as may be consistent with prime 
sirloins. The hei’d is kept to a limited number, and the annual 
sales of the surplus by auction afford excellent and encouraging 
opportunities to the tenant-farmers to improve their herds. 
North-west of Barnstaple is the Heanton herd of Sir W. R. 
Williams, Bart., a grand show herd. The cows, at the close of 
the show season, are turned out to grass, and all is done that 
thought and experience can suggest to minimise the strain of the 
show-yard training upon the constitution. 
Mr. N. Cook, of Che vithorne, Tiverton, breeds a herd of between 
seventy and eighty cows, let in dairies of under and over a 
score in each, to four dairymen, and has a dairy of his own 
besides. The longevity of the Devon, under conditions favourable 
to health, is here exemplified in the great ages of some of the 
cows, one of which at the age of nearly twenty years was still 
included in one of the dairies when the herd was recently seen. 
The rearing of the dairy cow is, of course, much more favourable 
to vital power and to prolonged fecundity than the rearing, for 
example, of heifers for show. There is no forcing in it ; the 
strength is not mortgaged to secure an over-rapid growth, and 
the work of the vital organs is not hindered by excess of inside 
fat. 
Mr. Benjamin Bucknell, of Holcombe Barton, although 
under a Somerset post-town, is still within the boundaries of 
