The following is the system I have adopted in the selection of the cattle I have wintered. I buy the best lots I can find during the summer, fit for wintering and keeping on to the following Christmas. I then cull the worst of the different lots, feeding the culls and wintering the tops. By this method I secure a lot of wintering cattle for the great Christmas market of the ensuing year, without one bad or indifferent beast among them. The price I have obtained for several years, with the exception of the culls of my winterers, has been £35 a-head.
In Aberdeenshire I consider that a large bullock ought to pay 25s. to 30s. a-month for keep, if he is properly treated. We often get less, and sometimes a little more, owing in some measure to the way in which the cattle are bought, the price of beef at the time, the season of the year the cattle are bought, and the time they are sold. Before we were threatened with the cattle plague I always made a point of buying my beasts early in the season, beginning in January and buying monthly up to May. I had thus a chance of the best lots, whereas, if I deferred making my selections, these went into other hands.
Fifty years ago, and for many a long year thereafter, there were no shorthorns in the north. There were few turnips grown, and few cattle fed. The great firm of the Williamsons, who rented St John's Wells, Bethelnie, and Easter Crichie; James Allardyce of Boyndsmill; the Harveys of Beidlestone and Danestone, and a few others, were almost the only parties who attempted the feeding of cattle. Mr Harvey of Ardo, who was then tenant of Danestone, died only the other day, aged ninety. Messrs Williamson and Reid were the great Aberdeen butchers at that period, and the feeders had either to sell to them or send their cattle on to Barnet Fair on their own account, or in the hands of the jobber. The journey occupied a month, and hay was their food. The cattle stood the road best upon hay, and it was surprising how fresh and sound the drovers took them up. Disease was unknown; the lung disease, the foot-and-mouth disease, are comparatively recent importations.
I was in the lean-cattle trade when foot-and-mouth disease first broke out, and got a sad fright when I came up to Falkirk and found my drove affected. When it got into a drove on their transit, the loss was heavy. At that time the cattle were not made more than half fat, else they could never have performed their journeys.