146 
COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 
good earnest, and left to pick at the frozen herbage about the 
fields. Every man’s experience tells him that he feels the neces¬ 
sity of protection and proper food more at the first appearace 
of -winter than after the system has become habituated to the 
action of cold ; hence there is no time when care and attention 
to stock are more needed, or will repay the farmer so well for 
his trouble, as in late autumn and in the early part of winter. 
If you allow your , animals to shiver, your fortune will be 
shivered in consequence ; that is, the farmer who leaves his 
cattle to the winds, will find his profits also given to the winds. 
It is much easier to keep animals in good thrift, than to raise 
them after they have, for a time, been running down. Of all 
our domestic animals sheep are the most difficult'to resuscitate 
after having become poor in the fall. It is, indeed, only with 
the best care and keeping that they can be brought again into 
good condition. The farmer who provides well-sheltered cotes 
for his sheep in winter, will soon have plenty of coats for 
himself and family. 
The practice so generally followed, of letting colts and young 
cattle shirk for themselves half of the winter, or of feeding 
them only the refuse of the farm, is as baneful an error as can 
be found in our whole system of mismanagement. They are 
allowed the free use of a straw stack, (and that frequently half 
rotten from careless stacking,) liberty to roam about the fields 
to pick frozen grass, and sometimes are turned upon the wheat 
in winter. . Such food affords but little nourishment. In youth 
there is two-fold demand for good wholesome food, first for 
repairing the waste of all the tissues of the body, second, for 
increasing the bulk. No animal will increase in bulk when 
kept in the manner first alluded to, for the fatty portions of the 
flesh are consumed to keep up the natural warmth, and the ani¬ 
mal is verily poorer in the spring. The consequences are, a 
stunted growth, a gradual enlargement of the abdomen, and the 
animal becomes what is significantly termed pot-bellied —it 
loses its fine form, and its digestive system is very often se¬ 
verely impaired. 
