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.