DAIRY MEETING. 137 



roughage shall be fed to the calf? The second winter perhaps 

 you can feed it straw or swale hay if you haven't anything 

 better, but the first winter when the calf is young, when it is 

 developing its digestive system, we want to give it something 

 nutritious. If the farm has produced some second crop clover 

 hay, I do not believe there is any better roughage for the calf 

 than this. If I could not give it second crop clover, I would 

 give it the first crop, and if I could not give it this, I would 

 select the best mixed hay the farm affords and give the calf 

 what it wants of this. In this way I would keep the calf grow- 

 ing all the time. By watching it every day you can tell whether 

 it is growing or not. The question frequently is asked me, 

 through letters and in meetings of this kind. How long do you 

 feed skim-milk? and I always answer, Just as long as I have 

 skim-milk to feed, because it is a cheap food and it keeps them 

 growing. I would like to say in this connection that if you 

 are feeding skim-milk to your calves and their hair is long and 

 their skin thick, do not get worried. It is bound to thicken up 

 the skin somewhat, but a little later the calf will take on that 

 thin, soft skin that we want in a dairy cow. 



The question comes to us. How can we keep our calves grow- 

 ing all through the year? In our ordinary Maine pastures we 

 too frequently turn our young calves out where they have to use 

 up more energy in gathering the food than they actually gain 

 from the grass they get. I do not believe that is profitable. 

 If we had a good blue grass pasture or a honeysuckle pasture 

 as you sometimes find, it might be desirable to turn them out 

 where they could fill themselves quickly and then lie down and- 

 digest that food and make it over into muscle and other c"on- 

 stituents. But calves that come along at this season of the 

 year, or even two or three months earlier, I would rather keep 

 in the barn the coming summer, because the flies and the scarc- 

 ity of the grass are not an incentive to good growth and devel- 

 opment. I would say this, however, — that as the fall approaches 

 I would prefer to turn the calves out during the day, feeding 

 them in the barn, so that they will get accustomed to getting 

 out and running around the pasture. Then the next spring 

 when they go out to pasture they will get ahead faster thin if 

 they had not been out the previous fall. Perhaps you think it 

 is a little bit hard on the calves to keep them in all summer. 



