those
upon the yellows. When taken up from grass, however, the cattle fed
upon the yellows were equal to those fed on the swedes. They were
grazed together. The difference of improvement in different lots of
cattle must have often struck every observer.

I am well acquainted with the different strawyards in Morayshire, and
know how the cattle are kept, and how they thrive. There are some farms
on which they thrive better than others, even when their keep is in
other respects the same. There are farms in Morayshire which are not
breeding farms, and where the young stock does not thrive, and the
calves have to be sold, and even old cattle only thrive for a certain
length of time. Some farms are apt to produce cancer on the throat and
side of the head. I pay little attention to this, as change of air
cures the complaint. For the first two or three weeks after a beast is
attacked with this disease, it will go back in condition; but I have
seldom seen much loss by it. If in warm weather, the beast may have to
be taken up to avoid the flies; if the disease is inside the throat, it
may interfere with the breathing, and the animal may have to be killed.
I bought from the late Mr David Sheriffs, Barnyards of Beauly, in
spring, ten Highlanders, every one of which had cancer in different
stages. I grazed them until October, when the cancers had all
disappeared, and the beasts did well (for Highlanders) at grass.

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