DAIRY MEETING. I43 



By cleanliness I mean, give the calf at all times a clean pen, 

 pure air, a clean pail or other receptacle to drink from, clean 

 rnilk to drink and clean other feed to go with it. These are 

 simple requirements, but they are the price of uniform success. 

 \Mien strictly attended to there will be no trouble with that 

 dread disease, the scours, which has baffled the success of so 

 many well meant efforts. 



Always feed from a pail, and always wash and scald it each 

 day, the same as the other milk pails. See to it that the milk 

 is of the same temperature each feed, and that the same quantity 

 is fed at each feeding. Any increase in quantity, or change in 

 the kind fed, must be approached gradually. These are little 

 things but of vital importance as related to continued success. 

 The objection to the patent calf-feeders offered for sale is that 

 they cannot be easily kept scalded each day, as is necessary, 

 especially in hot weather, in order to be in condition for the 

 calf to take milk from. It is really a sad sight to see the many 

 thin, thriftless, filthy, scouring calves, hopelessly trying to live, 

 and I always want to take the pitiful and helpless subjects, give 

 them the rational treatment that is their right, and send them on 

 the way to thrift and beauty and usefulness. 



The idea that a calf can be more easily taught to take its milk 

 from the hand of its keeper if never allowed to suck its dam is 

 all bosh. All a calf knows at first is the natural impulse to 

 draw milk from its dam in the natural way. The older the calf 

 grows the more it knows, and the more it knows the more easily 

 it can be taught to drink its milk if rightly handled. This I 

 have learned in hundreds of cases, the testimony of so many 

 others to the contrary notwithstanding. 



In recent years I have raised all my calves on skimmed milk. 

 This has now become the general practice, and is to be recom- 

 mended on account of the less cost. While the calf so fed will 

 not reach so great weight at a limited age as when fed whole 

 milk, yet this lack of rapid growth is easily made up by feeding 

 a longer time, and animals to be grown up for cows for dairy 

 purposes are more valuable than if reared on the whole milk. 

 For a heifer to be grown up into a dairy cow muscular vitality 

 is wanted rather than adipose tissue, and this it gets from the 

 skim-milk feed in larger measure than from whole milk, and 

 also does it at less cost. 



