THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 325 



WINTER FEEDING FOR THE WEANLING CALF. 



Wallaces' Farmer. 



An Illinois correspondent writes as follows: 



"Within the next few weeks hundreds and thousands of young calves 

 will be taken from the cows and put on feed for the first winter. Please 

 advise farmers through the columns of your paper how and what to feed, 

 and how to care for these calves during the first winter." 



Our correspondent of course refers to calves that have run with their 

 dams morning and evening, calves that have had little, if any, grain feed 

 during the summer, and have been dependent upon their mothers' milk 

 and what grass they cared to eat. When these calves are weaned at the 

 close of the grazing they usually weigh from three to four, and some 

 even five hundred pounds, and are in good flesh fit for veal; but in a 

 month or six weeks after the sudden change from milk and grass to grain 

 and grass, they present a sorry spectacle. Calves that have been kept in 

 the yard and suckled morning and evening usually fare much better, be- 

 cause if their owner has had any sort of gumption he has been giving 

 them more or less grain which they have learned to eat; and in that 

 case the change is not nearly so sudden. 



Our first experience in handling calves of this kind, was a sorry 

 one The calves were high grade, averaging nearly five hundred pounds 

 at weaning time. They were put the last week in September in a good 

 pasture with plenty of bluegrass dried on the ground. In our greenness 

 we ordered them fed a full feed of corn, and thought we would have 

 baby beef in a year. A heavy rain came on, soaking the ground thor- 

 oughly. W T arm weather followed, and the result was a very rank growth 

 of soft blue grass. In ten days thereafter, out of thirty calves six died 

 of blackleg. The calves were then removed to an oat field in which there 

 was a good deal of voluntary growth; turned back again in a week to 

 blue grass pasture, and four more died of blackleg. Those calves did 

 not make any baby beef, although they made splendid two-year-old feed- 

 ing steers. 



This experience will suggest the first point in the management and 

 that is, not to make a sudden change at weaning time from milk to grain. 

 If you have calves running with the cows and entirely acquainted with 

 grain, shut them up and let them suck morning and evening and 

 through the day let them have free access to oats and corn. Until the 

 change is made, it would pay to grind the grain, say bleached oats, 

 shriveled wheat and old corn and at the same time let them have access 

 to some good hay. Let the weaning be done gradually. Two milk ra- 

 tions a day at first, then one, then one every other day, every third day. 

 and then quit altogether. 



Now that the calves are weaned the question arises: When does the 

 owner intend to market them? In six months or a year as fatlings, or in 

 two years as feeders? If he intends to sell them as baby beef at a year 



