FITTING CATTLE FOR SALE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2644, 28 September 1882, Page 4

FITTING CATTLE FOR SALE.

Breeders are in the habit of feeding their young bulls pretty heavy, making them fat, if they can, because few men are well enough ▼erred in duo-bred cattle to enable them to judge of the merits of on animal, young or old, npon Lis record and points, unless the points are paints of fat, A man who has learned cattle thoroughly can trust himself to buy an animal thin in flesh, provided he can learn oi : the ancestry, and has the pedigree “Before him.. But the inexperienced buyer will take the fat bull or heifer with many faults covered, or at least obscured by fat, and leave the meritorious one standing in the stall, because not ao fat and sleek as the other. That excessive efforts have been made to fit animals for sale, to the detriment of their breeding qualities, we well know. But fitting within reasonable limits is warrantable, bocause buyers require animals to be attractive to the eye. The merchant places his goods in the most attractive shape, to insure a sale, and in doing so, merely carries out the common practice in all hues of business. The man having a lot of horses or mules to sell, feeds them up to a state of fatness. Common custom grants this privilege, and no exceptions are taken. Therefore, if the novice is unable to judge of what be regards as merit, the beast being thin or in moderate flesh only, he had better secure the services of some one better informed than himself. He employs the shoemaker and tailor to make hie boots and coat, simply because these are lines of business he acknowledges ignorance of, but he blunders ahead and buys animals that are in no wise suitable to be used as breeders. The ooat and boots wear out, leaving no trace, while the indiscreet j urohase in the matter of tha breeding animal may leave the impress ■of hia imperfections upon every young thing of his kind on the farm. And the impress he leaves is very hard to overcome. Tendency to grow into good shape is inherent in all animals that have been bred under proper rules, and this tendency shows itself to the practiced eye, no matter whst the state of keeping. So in fitting for sale, whether public or private, the breeder, if he fattens his animals, does so to meet the demands of the average customer, who, as stated, will turn from the premises of the breeder that shows meritorious animals in moderate flesh, to those of the man who fattens an inferior beast up to the point best calculated to captivate the novice. Now if, under this rale of practice, the buyer gets encumbered with animals who fail to produce, he has ne right to reflect npon any one but himself, much less to bring the seller into court—we have mentioned a rule of law which contemplates that the buyer shall use due diligence, leaping bis eyes open, and it there is any outward defect, ho is presumed to have discovered it. Excessive and harmful fatness it a condition entirely apparent, and the man who is induced to buy on account of the animal being fat should clearly not turn hia back upon the condition he has himself exacted, even though it entail a measure of disaster. There it a lesson to the progressive man in a shoddy coat. This lesson costa but a trifle compared to those which many a man has been called upon to encounter during a considerable portion of hie early career as a breeder. The fruits of errors made in estabUohing a herd or flock da not wear out at the end of a year, but multiply and disappoint tha owner. It may be argued that we have no evidence that a given animal will fatten in a becoming manner until this evidence is seen through tha accumulation of fat upon its back. Such an argument cm have no force before accumulated facts, and the man who is governed by such a proposition unwittingly an inflexible law—heredity—and papa, in many cases, a dollar a pound for flesh that has cost a twentieth part of this sum to put on, and is worth far leas, practically, than a like number of pounds of flesh upon the steer intended for slaughter,