exhibition, hove is generally the first
warning that the constitution can do no more. I have seen cases so
obstinate that they would swell upon hay or straw without turnips.
Putting the animal out to grass for a couple of months will generally
renovate the constitution and remove the tendency to hove; and after
being taken up from grass, with a man in charge who knows what to give
and _what not to give_, the animal may go on for a few months
longer, and with great attention may at last prove a winner.
Occasionally an animal may be found whose digestion no amount of
forcing will derange, but such cases are very rare. Cattle feeding in
the stall should be kept as clean as the hunter or valuable race-horse,
and their beds should be carefully shaken up.

I change the feeding cattle from tares and clover on to Aberdeen yellow
turnips, and afterwards to swedes, if possible by the middle of
October. I do not like soft turnips for feeding cattle. The cattle that
I intend for the great Christmas market have at first from 2 lb. to 4
lb. of cake a-day by the 1st of November. In a week or two I increase
the cake to at least 4 lb. a-day, and give a feed of bruised oats or
barley, which I continue up to the 12th or 14th of December, when they
leave for the Christmas market. The cake is apportioned to the
condition of the different animals, and some of the leanest cattle get
the double of others which are riper. The cattle being tied to the
stall places this quite in your power, while in the strawyard it could
not be done. When ten or twenty beasts in the strawyard stand together,
the strongest take the greatest share, and these are very often the
animals that least require it. I consider the stall a great advantage
over the strawyard in this respect, as you can give each beast what you
wish him to have. My men are told the quantity of cake and corn which I
wish every beast to receive. You must all have observed the inequality
in the improvement of cattle in the strawyard when ten, fifteen, or
twenty beasts are fed together. I have seen the best beast in a lot
when put up, the worst when taken out. The first three weeks after the
cattle are put upon cake along with their turnips, they will put on as
much meat as they will do with an equal quantity of cake for the next
five. It is absolutely necessary to increase the quantity of cake and
corn weekly to insure a steady improvement; and if cattle are forced
upon cake and corn over two o