330 Management of Levon Cattle. 
or meal. The older steers are rather better kept than the 
heifers. 
When the steers are to be fed off they are taken in and 
stall-fed upon hay, cake and com, foreign barley, maize and oat 
meal, if cheap enough ; in short, anything that is cheapest and 
good enough. In this district the steers are grown usually up 
to about forty score (100 st. of 8 lb.) when fat, under three 
years of age. 
Messrs. G. D. and II. 0. Hancock, of liaise, near Bishop’s 
Lydeard, Somerset, the third generation of a family of Devon 
breeders upon the same ground, farm nearly 500 acres upon the 
four-course system. Besides the ordinary crops they grow flax ; 
and this was the only place where the writer, in the course 
of an extensive recent tour of the principal Devon-breeding 
counties, saw the olden-time ox- team. The rainfall here is 
about thirty inches. In the seven years ending with 1890 the 
average was 29-4G, the highest record being 36-94 in 1886, 
and the lowest 23-41 in 1887. 
The principal calving-time is from about the middle of October 
until April l,the height of the season and thickest crowding-in 
of births being in the months of November and December. The 
earlier calves are usually hand-reared, the later suckled by 
“ stale ” cows : kept on the cows about four months and weaned 
in the spring, then kept upon cut trifolium and mangel until 
haytime is over, when they are turned into the aftermath, to 
grow out until November. In that month taken in, the largest 
have, in open courts, the roughest of the hay, with mangel ; a 
few of the youngest, better hay and a little corn. The after- 
treatment is, grass in the season ; in winter straw and rough hay, 
mangel if plentiful, sometimes turnips. The cows in milk are out 
day and night from spring until the end of November. When 
seen in that month, still lying out, they were getting cabbage in 
addition to the grass they continued to find in the fields. In dry 
and fine winter weather they are turned out in the morning until 
midday, on rough days kept in. Their morning and evening 
meal is chaff and pulped roots, with 3 lb. of decorticated 
cotton-cake, and in the evening hay is added. The steers are 
fed off when rising three years old, the ploughing oxen at the 
age of five years. Husk is the only considerable annoyance as 
regards health, and that is mostly upon land where calves affected 
with it have been before ; quarter-evil has been known, but is 
not common at Halse. Abortion, which seldom occurs, has been 
confined to heifers. 
Mr. A. C. Skinner’s herd at Pound, Bishop’s Lydeard, promi- 
nently represents the exhibition and bull-breeding departments 
