BEEFLINGS 5I 



duction. From the exact figures of calves so reared I see that 

 each calf made a gain, by the help of the milk, of 70 Ib. during 

 the period of ten weeks' pail-feeding; also that 65 Ib. of the 

 gain may be credited to the milk, so that 16 calves would give 

 a total of 1040 Ib. Allowing, as in the previous example, that 

 the cow supplying the milk uses the produce of 2^ acres we 

 get rather more weight of calf 416 Ib. as against 400 Ib. per 

 acre of plough-land. 



This extra amount of produce is not, however, the main 

 advantage of this last system of calf-rearing, for it must be 

 remembered that on plough-land one of the objects in mind is 

 the making of farmyard manure, and from this point of view 

 it is desirable to raise the greatest possible number of good 

 beeflings per head of milch-cows available. The pail-fed calf 

 also needs less housing accommodation. Ten cows standing in 

 a cow-house to be milked, with the calves they rear kept in 

 boxes by themselves, take up less room than that required to 

 house each cow in a separate box, and so the capital needed 

 to work the farm is reduced ; though here again this is not a 

 very important consideration. 



The choice between the two systems and there is no reason 

 why they should not be carried on together will probably be 

 decided by convenience or even by personal preference. In 

 some cases, the necessity of milking the mothers by hand is a 

 serious disadvantage of the second system; in others, buildings 

 will decide the choice, and so on. But that the return for food 

 consumed is greater with beeflings than with older cattle is evident 

 from the following figures taken from actual practice. The 

 animals described were the produce of cows, mated with good 

 Shorthorn bulls and kept in ordinary dairy herds where milk- 

 selling was the only object in view; the calves were removed 

 from the milk-producing farms to ordinary arable land when 

 only a few days old. The statement is published in the 

 certainty that under ordinary good management the results 

 can always be repeated with decently bred calves. 



Allowing a beefling 50 gallons of milk, to be hand fed, the 

 animal can be marketed at about 52 weeks old weighing about 

 6 cwt. live weight. The percentage of carcase weight yielded 



42 



