632 FEEDING OF CATTLE. 



should be taught to drink early, when from six to ten days old. It 

 will learn easier at this early season, and the cow will give more 

 milk through the season than if the calf were permitted to suck 

 longer. All feed should be given as nearly as possible of the tem- 

 perature of the mother's milk. The blooded calf should have the 

 tree run of a dry yard, with a little hay or grass to eat, that it may 

 early develop its nrst stomach and chew its cud. A small field of 

 grass in summer is better. When the time comes for feeding 

 skim-milk, the ration may be made about as nutritious as the new 

 milk by the addition of flax-seed gruel, which Stewart, in " Feeding 

 Animals," recommends to be made of a pint of flax-seed and a pint 

 of oilmeal, boiled in ten or twelve quarts of water, or flax-seed alone 

 in six times its bulk of water. Mix this with one to two parts of 

 skim-milk and feed blood- warm. Feed twice a day at regular times 

 till the calf is six months old. During this time the call should be 

 taught to eat a few oats, and in any tendency to scour, mix occas- 

 sionally a quart of coarse wheat flour with the food. Flax-seed and 

 pea-meal may also be used advantageously with the skim-milk. 



Ration for the Calf The calf may be fed pure milk 

 for a single week after weaning. Then use skim-milk prepared as 

 above described, or, if flax-seed is not obtainable, use as a substitute 

 two tablespoonf uls of oil -meal, dissolved in hot water. In a week this 

 may be doubled, gradually increasing to a pound a day, which will 

 be sufficient up to sixty days old. Stewart says twenty pounds of 

 skim-milk per day for the first ninety days is sufficient, but the 

 amount may be increased as the calf grows older. The linseed-oil 

 meal is valuable, not only because it is cheap (1 to 2 cents per ft>.), 

 but because it has ten per cent, of oil and a large percentage of 

 muscle-forming food, and phosphate of lime to build up the bones 

 and extend the frame. 



Feed Without Milk In absence of milk, whey may be 

 used; but in this case the oil taken away in the cream, and the nitro- 

 genous food, lime, etc., removed in the caseine taken out for the 

 cheese, have to be supplied. This is best done by adding a quarter 

 of a pound of oil-meal or cake dissolved in hot whey to each gallon, 

 and when the calf is three or four weeks old, add to this one-fourth 

 pound of wheat bran, or ground oats, for each gallon of whey. This 

 extra food is estimated to cost in six months $4 to $5, giving the 

 calf four gallons a day. A calf so fed should average 400 to 450 fcs. 

 at that age, and should be worth about $20; while, if fed on whey 

 alone, they will not be worth enough to pay for the labor of feeding. 



Another old and very good expedient to compensate for the 

 absence of milk is to feed hay tea, made of good quality of hay cut 

 early, and thoroughly boiled down. Two gallons of hay tea in which 

 have been boiled fourteen pounds each or flax-seed and wheat mid- 

 dlings will furnish five rations for a calf. Three pounds of hay, cut 

 in pieces one inch long for each calf, should be boiled half an hour. 

 The hay is then raised and let drain into the kettle, when the liquid 



