REVIEW — REPORT OF THE FARMING OF CORNWALL. 225 
proves successful — the stock being full one year in advance, in 
both weight and early maturity, compared with the common ave- 
rage of the Devons. The consequence of this crossing will, how- 
ever, soon prove injurious, unless care be always taken that pure 
blood be on one side — the male generally ; for where both sire and 
dam are only half bred, which is sometimes the case with us, the 
third cross proves a most mongrel stock indeed. Crosses with the 
Hereford bull have also been successfully made in the south-eastern 
parts of the county, particularly in the neighbourhood of St. Ger- 
mans, where this breed has been carefully preserved by the late 
Earl of St. Germans for the last twenty years. 
“ Feeding of Cattle. — The usual time to take the cattle into the 
houses to feed is about the months of October and November, 
when they are fed on white and yellow turnips, straw and hay, 
until March ; after this on swedes, straw and hay, to the fattening 
in June. Others feed on straw and turnips until February ; and 
hay, straw, and swedes, until May, and finish on grass afterwards. 
Others, we are sorry to say, rear a greater number of cattle than 
they can properly feed, which are kept in a half-starved condition, 
either in the yards or lanes in the winter, and turned out on the fields 
in the spring, and on the rough pastures or commons in the summer. 
Cattle thus kept are sold from four to six years old, varying from 
£10 to £14 each, and driven by the eastern jobbers up into the 
pasture lands of other counties to be fed. Some of our best farmers 
give small quantities of barley during the fattening. Oil-cake is 
seldom if ever used, and has scarcely been seen by one farmer in 
a thousand. The common Devon ox, fed in the general way, and 
with ordinary care, averages cwt.; cows 5 cwt.; and very many 
oxen will reach 1000 lbs. weight. Good shelter, warm litter, whole- 
some and abundant fodder, are the necessaries which fortify our 
stock against the attacks of winter ; and, through these, sleekness 
and good condition — which are the only signs of health and pros- 
perity in the animal — are preserved. There should be no cessation 
in the rearing and feeding of cattle : those that are stuffed and 
starved by turns are certain to prove unprofitable to the feeder in 
every way ; for here it is that the inroads of disease are first to be 
apprehended, and here its attacks will be certain to prove formidable 
and fatal. The diseases of cattle are neither numerous nor very fatal. 
The 1 pleuro-pneumonia’ has lately occasioned the death of thou- 
sands in other counties, but has never visited us ; and the ‘ vesicu- 
lar epizootic,’ which was prevalent here as elsewhere in 1840, did 
of Heligan, proving that crosses with the Devon and the Teeswatcr breeds were 
made a great many years since in Cornwall, some of that blood having been 
introduced by the grandfather of the present Earl of Falmouth, at Tregothnan. 
in 1790. 
