Management of Devon Cattle. 
327 
the sake of convenience, under necessity, are reared by the cows. 
It is managed thus : The cows, being of good milking strains, 
can usually rear two or three calves each. The calves of some 
of the cows are, therefore, given to other cows, which suckle 
them together with their own, and to cows from which calves 
have been weaned. A cow may be seen sometimes suckling 
two calves together ; sometimes a cow takes two or three calves 
in succession. The free cows are filling the dairy in the mean- 
time. After rearing the calf or calves — one, two, three or more, 
as the varying case may be — the cows are milked until about 
six weeks from the time of calving again, some, by oversight, 
still longer, so that the suckling cows at last also add to the 
milk sent into the dairy. Very few cows “ run dry ” (cease to 
give milk) until they are intentionally “ dried ” in the usual way. 
Hand-milked cows usually breed again sooner than those which 
suckle the calves. Mr. Kidner seldom rears a bull, but when 
he does so the calf sucks some time beyond the age at which the 
heifer and steer calves are weaned. 
The calves go out to grass (which is plentiful and good) as 
early as they can in the spring. Those which come in as year- 
lings, at the approach of the following winter, are wintered on hay. 
Later, as the spring comes on, they get a little mangel, — if the hay 
fall short, chaff, and sometimes a few roots pulped with it. 
Any calves born out of the season between Michaelmas and 
Christmas necessarily require different treatment. A good 
many come between Christmas and May 1, and some between 
that date and Michaelmas. The youngest get a little cake in 
addition to hay, those of intermediate birth having their fare 
regulated according to age, in the winter. 
Spring comes, and heifers and steers again go out to grass. 
As the year wanes, the heifers gradually go out in the fields by 
day, until about Christmas. Their principal food besides grass 
is barley straw, given whole, which Mr. Kidner prefers to 
chaffed straw, as they select the best and most digestible parts 
and leave the coarse thick ends for bedding. If the straw is 
sweet and good they do very well without either hay or cake, 
but when it is not so they have once a day either a little hay or 
an equivalent of either linseed cake or decorticated cotton cake 
or other concentrated food, with the addition of mangel after 
Candlemas. 
The two-year-old steers have similar treatment but a larger 
proportion of hay or artificial food, and after March 1 no straw, 
but hay twice a day instead ; and as the grass season comes 
round once more they are turned out and “ finished off” at ages 
ranging from 2^ to 3 years old, some, but very few, being re- 
