776 



CYCLOPEDIA OF LIVE STOCK AND COMPLETE STOCK DOCTOR. 



III. The Starved Calves at Grass. 



He expects his calves to get on their feed the next summer. Calves are 

 endowed with great vitality, and if their stomachs recover something of 

 tone, thev will have shed their old hair, (what has not been eaten out by 

 vermin) by the first of July, and by fall, if it be a good year for grass, 

 they will be in half-decent store condition, and perhaps weigh 150 to 170 

 pounds each. That is, they will have gained from sixty to eighty pounds 

 of flesh, each, to cover their bones. They are at the end of eighteen 

 months, just where a good calf should have been at weaning time the fall 



BADLY WINTERED. WELL WINTERED. 



before, but with constitutions ruined so far as profitable feeding is 

 concerned. 



Thus, this kind of feeding goes on ; starved in winter and allowed to 

 shift for themselves in summer, at the age of three years they will aver- 

 ao-e 800 pounds, gross weight, if no epidemic seizes them. 



IV. The Other Side. 



The common-sense feeder keeps his calves growing right along, with 

 plenty of new milk until their stomachs are capable of digesting solid 

 food, when meal mush is added, and the cream taken from the milk. As 

 soon as they will eat oats and grass, they are given as much of these as 

 they want; and in the autumn, when ready for wintering, it would not 

 be strange if they should average 200 pounds each. 



V. Good Winter Keeping for Calves. 



They are given warm shelter and the best and softest hay, with a gen- 

 erous allowance of meal daily. So they grow right along, and may be 

 made to gain a hundred pounds during the winter. The next summer 

 they are kept on flush pasture, or, if grass is bad, they get some corn, 

 with plenty of pure water, and a place is provided where they may es- 

 cape flies. Thus at three years old the steers are heavy beeves, and the 

 heifers will have produced a fine calf, each, and be ready to do justice to 

 them in the way of nourishment. 



