When your Secretary wrote inviting me to take part in a discussion on “ Animals and Grass,” I agreed with alacrity on account of the very keen fascination which the subject has for me. Since then, in trying to compose this paper, I realise how rash I was, and how unsuited, even after nearly twenty years’ farming, to make a useful contribution to this discussion. Because I do wish it to be clear to everyone that I, personally, have not made a success of grass farming, and therefore this paper is really an apology, or, if you will, an attempt to justify negligence, in which, I believe, I am not alone.

The first ten years of my farming life were spent on a marginal land farm, rising from eight hundred feet, and for the last ten it has been my privilege to farm what I consider to be one of the finest arable farms in Scotland. For that reason, I do feel that I have a certain claim to talk to you here to-day even if only with failures to illustrate my point.