340 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



able to balance up the ration accordingly. If this is done properly, 

 all the animals will be growing or producing to the limit of their 

 capacity. 



The feeder is an artist who can take a calf and grow it into a 

 cow that is capable of producing 400 pounds or more of butter in 

 a year, yet he should be able to do this with 90 per cent of the 

 female calves in his care, in face of the fact that the average butter 

 produced by the milch cows of Iowa is a meager 15 pounds. To 

 accomplish this result, his efforts must be untiring from the day the 

 calf is born. After the calf has received the colostrum from the cow for 

 the first two or three days of its life, or until the inflammation is out of 

 the dam's udder, and after the point is past where milk fever is liable to 

 occur, the youngster should be taken away and taught to drink about ten 

 pounds of new milk a day for two weeks. Skim milk should then 

 be gradually substituted for a proportion of the new milk until at the 

 end of a month the calf is drinking about twelve pounds of skim 

 milk. It is not advisable to feed a larger quantity up to this time, 

 and never should a calf receive more than twenty pounds of milk in 

 one day, else indigestion and scours will result, giving the calf a 

 set back in its growth. A tablespoonful of blood flour given regularly 

 in each feed of milk will positively eliminate all danger from calf 

 scours, where a reasonable amount of milk is fed. 



When two weeks old, the calf begins to want for food of a more 

 solid nature, at which time a mixture of one-third each of corn, oats 

 and bran should be given it, together with a bunch of good clover 

 hay. If blood flour is fed in the milk, there will be a sufficient 

 amount of protein and ash in the ration to warrant lively growth 

 of bone and muscle. Otherwise, one-fourth of the grain ration should 

 be composed of oil meal to insure proper development. The calf 

 should never suffer from hunger. The fact that a dairy calf should 

 never become fat has led many to think that it should be half starved. 

 Neither the half starved poor weakling nor the plump fat youngster 

 will ever become a profitable dairy cow. By feeding all the feed of 

 the right character that the calf will readily clean up from its feed- 

 box, a happy medium will be struck that will insure the most excel- 

 lent dairy cows. Access to a grass lot is essential in the summer 

 time, but every day for the first year the calf should have a feed of 

 corn, bran and oats suitable to its needs. As a yearling, the heifer 

 is little trouble; the only care necessary being to see that she re- 

 ceives sufficient food rich in bone and muscle producing elements 

 to insure unchecked growth until maturity is reached. Two weeks 

 prior to the first freshening period, which should come when the 

 heifer is about two years old, she should be placed in a roomy, quiet, 

 well-bedded box stall at nights, where all is quiet. Here she should 

 be fed warm bran mashes containing a handful of oil meal and when 

 calving time, the most critical period of her life comes, all condi- 

 tions will be harmonious and no trouble is liable to ensue. The same 

 care should continue for two weeks, during which time her calf has 

 been taken from her, she has become quiet, gained regularly in her 



