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(Written by J. W. Hart). 



A knowledge of the principles which underlie the science of feeding will 

 materially aid any one who essays to raise dairy stock; and no class of stock upon 

 the farm will more fully respond to judicious, intelligent and generous treatment 

 than will the calves. No saving can be effected by stinting calves in their feed. 

 The man who starves his young stock through greed of gain, and in accordance with 

 his false notions of economy, is not a capable stock-raiser or feeder. Aside from a 

 humanitarian standpoint, what shall it profit a man if he feed a calf twelve months 

 to attain a weight that could have been laid on in one-half the time? A stunted, 

 dejected-looking calf, and the loss of the food necessary to maintain its miserable 

 existence for six months is the ordinary result. Nor is this all. If the calf be raised 

 for the dairy it will seldom outlive the effects of its early treatment. The differ- 

 ence between what such a cow is, and what she might have been — extending over a 

 period of years, and to her offspring — will keep hundreds of dollars out of the stock- 

 raiser's pocket. 



The feeding of a calf commences before the calf is dropped. Before calving, the 

 cow should be fed liberally with suitable food, that the calf may be strong and vigoui- 

 ous, and the flow of milk large. 



"Milk is the natural food of the young of all mammalia," But, except in a few 

 instances (and they are rarer than many of our breeders of thoroughbred stock 

 suppose), milk — the model and perfect food — is too expensive a diet for the calves. 

 Therefore, some owners of cows knock the calves on the head; but others prefer to 

 raise them. The object of this article is to show how this may be accomplished with 

 profit. I would not advise any one to raise all the calves dropped in his herd. It 

 matters not how excellent the herd may be, there will be some weakly calves, and 

 calves from the poorest milkers, that cannot be raised with profit or advantage. 



Milk being a perfect food, supplying all the elements necessary for the growth 

 of bone, muscle, nerve and sinew, for repairing waste and maintaining the animal 

 heat, "it must follow as the night the day," that the more closely we can get our 

 substitutes to resemble milk, in character and composition, the more rational and 

 correspondingly successful will our practice be. The foHotving is an average of a 

 number of analyses of milk : — 



Water 87-25 percent. 



Fat 3-50 do 



Albuminoids '.. 3-90 do 



Sugar 4-60 do 



Ash . -75 do 



In this article I shall not attempt a description of these constituents and their 

 functions in the animal economy. If the fat be taken from the milk in the 

 form of butter it should be replaced by a cheaper food, rich in fat. Flax-seed 

 is such a food, and its mucilaginous character when cooked specially adapts it 

 to the tender mucous coat of the alimentary tract of the young animal. If 

 flax-seed be difficult to obtain, linseed-meal, oatmeal, pease-meal or cotton-seed meal 

 may be used. If whey be used as the basis of a ration, it should be fed sweet. 

 Owing to its watery character, more grain should be fed with it than with skim- 

 milk. Whatever meal is fed in milk or whey should be cooked. 



I think it best to let the calf get its fill two or three times from the dam in 

 nature's own way. Then feed it twice a day on whole milk, warm from the cow, 

 until it is a week old. A gallon at a feed will be as much as an ordinarj^ calf can 

 assimilate. To teach a calf to drink, back it into a corner, get astride of its neck, 

 and set the pail containing the milk down in front of it; place the first two fingers 

 of the right hand in its mouth, keeping the palm of the hand over its nose. As soon 

 as the calf commences to suck, lower its nose into the pail of milk ; the calf will 

 continue to suck, drawing the milk through the canal formed by the fingers ; gently 

 remove the fingers, keeping the calf's nose — not its nostrils — below the surface. If 

 it keeps on drinking, the victory is won; but if objecting to this — to it unnatural 

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