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 i