Chapter 2

If you put upon grass cattle which have been fed through the winter upon cake, corn, brewers' wash, grains, or potatoes, and kept in hot byres or close strawyards, and look to them to pay a rent, you will find that they will soon make a poor man of you. This mode of feeding is unnatural. Before the animals begin to improve, three months will have passed. If half-fat cattle are bought, which have been kept close in byres or strawyards, and put to grass in April or the first two weeks of May, and cold stormy weather sets in, with no covering to defend them, they will fall off so much that the purchaser will scarcely believe they are the beasts he bought. Thus he not only loses all his grass, but the beasts will be lighter at the end of three months than when they were put into the field. Let me not, however, be misunderstood. I do not mean to say that a few weeks of a little cake or corn will ruin a beast for grazing; but you may depend upon it, that the less artificial food given during winter the better. When kept upon the food I have specified for months and months, they are perfectly unfit for grazing. I regard cake as the safest substitute for turnips; and corn, potatoes, brewers' wash, and grain, as the worst. But my ambition is to graze a bullock that has never been forced, and has never tasted cake, corn, or potatoes. The store cattle I winter for grazing are all kept in open strawyards, with a sufficient covering for bad weather, and as dry a bed as the quantity of straw will permit. This is indispensable for the thriving of the cattle. They receive as many turnips as they can eat. Beasts must always be kept progressing; if they are not, they will never pay. My store cattle never see cake, corn, or potatoes. I would rather throw potatoes to the dunghill than give them to a store bullock, though I would give them to my fatting bullocks.[1] If I can get the bullocks for grazing that I want, I will not lose one mouthful of grass upon them. They will not go on, however, without proper care and superintendence. It requires a practised eye. If a grazier has a number of fields and many cattle, to carry out the treatment of his cattle properly, shifting and fresh grass once in ten or fourteen days should, if possible, be adopted. This has always been my practice. In one day I have observed a marked difference in the improvement of animals after the shift.

[1] As to giving potatoes to store cattle, since writing the above, I wish to modify the opinion I have expressed to a certain extent. I had a conversation with Mr Hope on the subject, and he states that his belief is, that potatoes are not prejudicial to the growth of store cattle when put to grass, and that his practice is to give them potatoes. I will admit that a few potatoes may not do a store beast much harm; but in my experience in Aberdeenshire I have found that in cattle which have been fed with potatoes the black colour changes to a dusty brown; they are also bad thrivers. A beast that sports that colour is never doing well. I shall, however, prosecute the inquiry.

The grazier must always consider the quality of his grass-land, and buy cattle adapted for it. It would be very bad policy to buy fine cattle for poor or middling lands. You must always keep in view how the cattle have been kept. If they have been kept improperly for your purpose, their size, whether large or small, will not save you from loss. If the cattle are kept on cake, corn, potatoes, or brewers' wash or grain, during the previous winter, it will be ruin to the grazier. Let it not be supposed, however, that I recommend buying lean, half-starved beasts. What I wish to impress on you is, that you must keep the cattle always full of flesh; and, as a breeder, you must be careful not to lose the calf flesh. If you do so by starving the animal at any time of his growth, you lose the cream--the covering of flesh so much prized by all our best retail butchers. Where do all the scraggy, bad-fleshed beasts come from that we see daily in our fat markets, and what is the cause of their scragginess? It is because they have been stinted and starved at some period of their growth. If the calf flesh is once lost, it can never be regained. A great deal of tallow may be got internally by high feeding, but the animal can never again be made one that will be prized by the great retail butcher. Our Aberdeen working bullocks carry little good meat. Draught as well as starvation takes off the flesh. They are generally only fit for ship beef.

Let me now offer a few observations as to the breeds of cattle best adapted for paying a rent--the great object of our cattle rearing and feeding. I have grazed the pure Aberdeen and Angus, the Aberdeen and North-country crosses, the Highland, the Galloways, and what is termed in Angus the South-country cattle, the Dutch, and the Jutland. Except the two latter, all the others have got a fair trial. I am aware that the merits of the pure Aberdeen and Angus form a difficult and delicate subject to deal with. I know that the breeders of Shorthorns will scrutinise my statements carefully. But my only object is to lay down my own experience, and I trust that I have divested myself of prejudice as much as possible. If store cattle of the Aberdeen and Angus breed out of our best herds can be secured, I believe _no other_ breed of cattle will pay the grazier more money in the north for the same value of keep. But there is a race of starved vermin which is known by some in the north by the name of "Highland hummlies," which I consider the worst of all breeds. No keep will move them much. At the top of these I must place those with the brown ridge along the back. They can be made older, but it takes more ability than I ever had to make them much bigger. Keep is entirely thrown away upon such animals. As regards good Aberdeen or North-country crosses, they are rent-payers. He would be very prejudiced indeed who would not acknowledge their merits. I graze more cross-bred cattle than pure-bred polled. The Highlanders on our land are not profitable; they are of such a restless disposition that they are unsuitable for stall-feeding, however well they are adapted for grazing purposes in certain localities and under certain conditions. But, I repeat, for stall-feeding they are unsuitable; confinement is unnatural to their disposition. The last Highlanders I attempted to feed were bought at a cheap time. In the month of June they were most beautiful animals, and they grazed fairly. I tied them up; but they broke loose again and again, and ran three miles off to the glen where they had been grazed. There was one of them that his keeper never dared to approach, and the stall had to be cleaned out with a long crook. They consumed few turnips, and did not pay sixpence for what turnips they did consume. No other description of cattle, however, is so beautiful for noblemen's and gentlemen's parks.

As to the Galloway cattle, they also have had a fair trial with me. I was in the habit of buying for years from one of the most eminent judges of store Galloways in Britain--Captain Kennedy of Bennane--a lot of that breed. He selected them generally when stirks from all the eminent breeders of Galloway cattle, and bought nearly all the prize stirks at the different shows. In fact, he would not see a bad Galloway on his manors. The Galloway has undoubtedly many and great qualifications. On poor land they are unrivalled, except perhaps by the small Highlanders. Captain Kennedy's cattle always paid me; they were grazed on a 100-acre park of poor land--so poor, indeed, that our Aberdeens could not subsist upon it. I had ultimately to break it up for cropping. If I had not been obliged to do this, I should not have liked to have missed Captain Kennedy's Galloways. Although the Galloways are such good cattle to graze--and this goes to prove the truth of my remarks as to the forcing system, the Galloways at Glenapp being wintered out--they are not so easily finished as our Aberdeen and Angus or cross-bred cattle. They have too much thickness of skin and hair, too much timber in their legs; they are too thick in their tails, too deep in their necks, too sunken in the eye, for being very fast feeders. It is difficult to make them ripe. You can bring them to be three-quarters fat, and there they stick; it is difficult to give them the last dip. If, however, you succeed in doing so, there is no other breed worth more by the pound weight than a first-class Galloway.

As to what we term the South-country cattle, I have also given them a trial. My experience is that they are great beasts to grow; that they consume an immense deal of food, but that they are difficult to finish; and when finished they are very indifferent sellers in the London market. They generally carry a deal of offal along with them; but those who have patience, and keep them for many months, they may pay for keep. I have had a few German and Jutland cattle through my hands, but not in sufficient numbers to enable me to say anything about them worthy of your notice. After trying all the breeds of cattle I have specified, I have come to the conclusion that the Aberdeen and Angus polled, and the Aberdeen and North-country crosses, are the cattle best adapted, under ordinary circumstances, in the north of Scotland, for paying the feeder. Our cross-bred cattle, and especially the South-country cattle, are greater consumers of food than the pure Aberdeens. This is a part of the subject which has never got the consideration it deserves. When the cross and South-country cattle are two or three years old, and when the day lengthens out, they consume a fearful quantity of food. The age of cattle ought also to be taken into consideration. No doubt a young two-year-old will grow more than a three-year-old, and for a long keep may pay as well. But I have been always partial to aged cattle; and if you want a quick clearance, age is of great consequence. The great retail London butchers are not partial to "the two teeths," as they call them; and I have seen them on the great Christmas-day examining the mouths of cattle before they would buy them. They die badly as to internal fat, and are generally light on the fore-rib. I have always given a preference to aged cattle, as they get sooner fat, are deep on the fore-rib, and require less cake to finish them. Aged cattle, however, are now difficult to be had, and every year they will be scarcer with the present demand for beef. A perfect breeding or feeding animal should have a fine expression of countenance--I could point it out, but it is difficult to describe upon paper. It should be mild, serene, and expressive. The animal should be fine in the bone, with clean muzzle, a tail like a rat's, and not ewe-necked; short on the legs. He should have a small well-put-on head, prominent eye, a skin not too thick nor too thin; should be covered with fine silky hair--to the touch like a lady's glove; should have a good belly to hold his meat; should be straight-backed, well ribbed up, and well ribbed home; his hook-bones should not be too wide apart. A wide-hooked animal, especially a cow after calving, always has a vacancy between the hook-bone and the tail, and a want of the most valuable part of the carcass. I detest to see hooks too wide apart; they should correspond with the other proportions of the body. A level line should run from the hook to the tail. He should be well set in at the tail, free of patchiness there and all over, with deep thighs, that the butcher may get his second round and prominent brisket deep in the fore-rib, with a good purse below him, which is always worth £1 to him in the London market; well fleshed in the fore-breast, with equal covering of fine flesh all over his carcass, so valuable to the butcher. His outline ought to be such that if a tape is stretched from the fore-shoulder to the thigh, and from the shoulder along the back to the extremity there, the line should lie close, with no vacancies; and without a void, the line should fill from the hook to the tail. From the shoulder-blade to the head should be well filled up--as we say, good in the neck vein. I am aware that the preceding remarks as to the quality and proportions a beast should possess must be very unsatisfactory to you, as they are to myself; scarcely any one animal has possessed them all, and to look for the half of them in a good commercial beast would be vain. I have consulted no writer upon the subject; they are set down, and not in good order, just as they struck me at the time. Thick legs, thick tails, sunken eyes, and deep necks, with thick skin and bristly hair, always point to sluggish feeders.

In cold weather in the month of May, the old silky coat of the strawyard bullock is of great advantage. If we could get the qualities and proportions I have specified in animals, it would not be difficult to make them fat. It would be difficult only to make them lean, when once in condition. A high standing, want of ribbing-up and ribbing home, with the tucked-up flank, always denote a worthless feeder. You must all have observed how difficult it is to bring such cattle into a state for killing. It will take a deal of cake and corn to make them ripe. A great many can never be made more than fresh; it is only a waste of time and money to keep them on.

I have adverted to the way cattle should be treated in winter as stores. The earlier you can put cattle upon grass so much the better. Cattle never forget an early bite of new grass. A week's new grass in Aberdeenshire at the first of the season is worth at least two and a half upon old grass; and it is wonderful what improvement a good strawyard bullock will make in four or five weeks at the first of the season. If kept on straw and turnips alone in winter, he may add a third or at least a fourth to his live weight. But much depends on the weather. I have never known cattle make much improvement in April, or even up to the 12th of May, because the weather is so unsteady, and the cold nights when they are exposed in the fields take off the condition the grass puts on. The grazier will find it of great advantage to house his cattle at night during this season. In Aberdeenshire the 10th of May is about the earliest period cattle should be put to grass. Where there is new grass, first year, it is a most difficult matter to get the full advantage of it. There is no other grass to be compared with it for putting on beef in Aberdeenshire. You must be careful at the first of the season, if much rain falls, not to allow the cattle to remain on the young grass. They must be shifted immediately; and no one can get the proper advantage of such grass who is deprived of the power of shifting the cattle into a park of older grass till the land again becomes firm for the cattle. I have seen a small field of new grass in the month of May or the beginning of June utterly ruined in one night, when heavily stocked with cattle. When wet and cold the cattle wander about the whole night, and in the morning the fields are little better than ploughed land. In fact, the field so injured will never recover until broken up again.

In regard to my own farms, I cut scarcely any hay. I pasture almost all my new grass, and the moment the cattle's feet begin to injure the grass, they are removed. If cattle are changed to an old grass field, so much the better; but they will be safe on second or third year's grass, provided the land is naturally dry. By the 1st July, the new grass land gets consolidated, and you are safe. New grass fields are bad to manage in another respect. The grass comes very rapidly about the 10th June, and if you are not a very good judge of what you are about, it will get away in a few days, become too rank, and will lose its feeding qualities during the remainder of the season. By the middle of July it will be nothing but withered herbage. Young grass ought to be well eaten down, and then relieved for two or three weeks; then return the cattle, and the grass will be as sweet as before. It requires practice to know the number of cattle, and the proper time to put on these cattle, to secure the full benefits of new grass. Three days' miscalculation may cause a heavy loss. I have been bit so often, and found the difficulty so great, that I fear to extend my observations on this part of the subject, when I am addressing gentlemen many of whom make their young grass into hay, or sell the grass to the cowfeeders. The pasturing of new grass, in which the farmers of Aberdeenshire and the north of Scotland have a deep interest, may not apply to many other parts of Scotland.

I come now to the way cattle should be treated after being taken from their pastures and put on turnips. The earlier you put them up, the sooner they will be ready for the butcher. The practice of tying the cattle early up in Aberdeenshire is now almost universal; the success of the feeder depends upon it, for a few weeks may make a difference of several pounds. I recollect tying up a lot of cattle at Ardmundo, thirty in number--a fair cut of ten being left in the field at home on fine land and beautiful grass. The thirty were tied up by the 1st of September, the ten on the 1st of October. The weather was cold, wet, and stormy; and between the improvement the thirty had made and the deterioration upon the ten, there was by my computation, however incredible it may appear, £5 a-head of difference. Mr Knowles of Aberdeen happened to see the cattle, and when he came upon the ten he asked what was the matter with them. He could scarcely credit the facts; their hair was so bad that they actually looked like diseased animals, and it was long before they took a start. I shall state the method I adopt. I sow annually from twelve to sixteen acres of tares, and about the middle of June save a portion of the new grass full of red clover, and from the 1st to the 20th of August both tares and clover are fit for the cattle. I have for many years fed from three hundred to four hundred cattle; and if I was not to take them up in time, I could pay no rent at all. A week's house-feeding in August, September, and October, is as good as three weeks' in the dead of winter. I begin to put the cattle into the yards from the 1st to the middle of August, drafting first the largest cattle intended for the great Christmas market. This drafting gives a great relief to the grass parks, and leaves abundance to the cattle in the fields. During the months of August, September, and October, cattle do best in the yards, the byres being too hot; but when the cold weather sets in there is no way, where many cattle are kept, in which they will do so well as at the stall. You cannot get loose-boxes for eighty or a hundred cattle on one farm. I generally buy my store cattle in Morayshire. They have all been kept in the strawyard, never being tied. When the cattle are tied up on my farms, a rope is thrown over the neck of the bullock; the other end of the rope is taken round the stake; two men are put upon it, and overhaul the bullock to his place. When tightened up to the stall the chain is attached to the neck, and the beast is fast. We can tie up fifty beasts in five hours in this way. When tied, you must keep a man with a switch to keep up the bullocks. If you did not do this you would soon have every one of them loose again. They require to be carefully watched the first night, and in three days they get quite accustomed to their confinement, except in the case of some very wild beast. I never lost a bullock by this method of tying up. This system is like other systems--it requires trained hands to practise it.

I never give feeding cattle unripe tares; they must be three parts ripe before being cut. I mix the tares when they are sown with a third of white pease and a third of oats. When three parts ripe, especially the white pease, they are very good feeding. Fresh clover, given along with tares, pease, &c., forms a capital mixture. I sow a proportion of yellow Aberdeen turnips early to succeed the tares and clover. I find the soft varieties are more apt to run to seed when sown early than yellow turnips.

It is indispensable for the improvement of the cattle that they receive their turnips clean, dry, and fresh. When obliged to be taken off the land in wet weather, the hand should be used to fill the turnips from the land to the carts. The turnips should be pulled and laid in rows of four or six drills together on the top of one drill, with the tops all one way and the roots another; but it is better that parties should follow the carts and pull the turnips from the drills, and throw them into the carts at once. It is an invariable rule with me that the turnips are filled by hand in wet weather. Advantage should be taken of fine weather to secure a good stock of turnips, and a good manager will always provide for a rainy day. A very considerable proportion of turnips should be stored, to wait the severe winters very often experienced on the north-east coast. If I had sufficient command of labour, I would store the greater part of my Swedish turnips (if ripe). I would, however, store only a proportion of the Aberdeen yellow, as they lose the relish, and cattle prefer them from the field; but I require a proportion of them for calving cows in frost. Frosted turnips make cows with calf abort, and rather than give calving cows such turnips I would order them straw and water. Fresh Swedish turnips are indispensable to feeding cattle during the winter. It is a sorrowful sight to see a gang of men with picks taking up turnips in a frosty day, leaving a third of the produce on the land, and the turnips going before your bullocks as hard as iron. We have almost every year a week or ten days' fine weather about Christmas, and this should be taken advantage of to store turnips, if not stored previously. I have tried all the different modes of storing recommended. I shall not enter on the minutiæ of the subject, as it is now generally so well understood; and I need only urge here that the roots should not be bled in any way, that the tops should not be taken off too near to the bulbs, that the tails be only switched, and that they be pitted and secured _every_ night to keep them free from frost and rain. I have adopted my friend Mr Porter of Monymusk's plan (in a late climate and where Swedish turnips in some years never come to full maturity) of pitting them upon the land where they grow, from one to two loads together; and, although not quite ripe, I have never seen a turnip go wrong when stored in this manner. The land also escapes being poached, as the turnips are carted in frost, and at a time when the other operations of the farm are not pressing. A foot of earth will keep them safe, and they are easily covered by taking a couple of furrows with a pair of horses on each side of the line of pits.

In a week or ten days after the first lot of cattle is taken up from grass, a second lot is taken up. This is a further relief to the pastures, and the cattle left in the fields thrive better. This taking up continues every week or ten days to the end of September. At this period all feeding cattle ought to be under cover that are intended to be fattened during the succeeding winter. The stronger cattle are drafted first, and the lesser ones left until the last _cull_ is put under cover.