TEEDING OF YOU>'G CALVES 603 



milk — or had I better make butter and g: • e the skimmed milk to my 

 calves — or will the veal, if I give my calf all the milk, pay me a bet- 

 ter price in the end ? The result of many trials has shown, that in some 

 districts the high price obtained for well fed veal gives a greater profit 

 than can be derived from the milk in any other way. 



While the calf is very young — during tlie first two or three weeks — 

 Its bones and muscles chiefly grow. It requires the materials of these, 

 therefore, more than fat, and hence half the milk it gets, at first, may be 

 skimmed, and a little bean meal may be mixed with it to add more of 

 the casein or curd out of which the muscles are to be formed. The cos- 

 tive effect of the bean meal must be guarded against by occasional me- 

 dicine, if required. 



In the next stage, more fat is necessary, and in the third week at 

 latest, full milk, with all its cream, should be given, and more milk than 

 the mother supplies if the calf requires it. Or, instead of the cream, a 

 less costly kind of fat may be used. Oil-cake, finely crushed, or lin- 

 seed meal, may supply at a cheap rate the fat which, in the form of 

 cream, sells for much money. And, instead of the additional milk, bean 

 meal in larger quantity may be tried, and if cautiously and skilfully used, 

 the best effects on the size of the calf and thfe firmness of the veal may 

 be anticipated. 



In the third or fattening stage, the custom is, with the same quantity 

 of milk, to give double its natural quantity of cream — that is, to supply 

 in this way the fat which the animal is wished chiefly to lay on. This 

 cream may either be mixed directly with the mother's milk, or, what is 

 better, the afterings of several cows may be given to the calf along 

 with its food. For the "expensive cream there might no doubt be sub- 

 stituted many cheaper kinds of fat which the young animal might be 

 expected to appropriate as readily as it does the fat of the milk. Lin- 

 seed meal is given with economy. Might not vegetable oils and even 

 animal fats be made up into emulsions which the calf would readily 

 swallow, and which would increase his weight at an equally low cost ? 

 A fat pease-soup has been found to keep a cow long in milk ; might it 

 uot be made profitable also to a fattening calf? 



The selection of articles of food which will specially increase the size 

 of the bones in the growing animal, by supplying a large quantity 

 of the phosphates, is at present limited in a considerable degree. The 

 grain of wheat, barley, and oats is the source from which these phos- 

 phates are most certainly and most abundantly supplied to the animals 

 that feed upon them. But in many cases corn is too expensive a food, 

 and those kinds of corn which contain the largest proportion of the phos- 

 phates supply only a comparatively small quantity in a given time to the 

 growing animal. Why should not bone-dust or bone-meal be introduced 

 as an article of general food for growing animals ? There is no reason 

 to believe tliat animals would dislike it — none that they would be unable 

 to digest it. With this kind of food at our command, we might hope to 

 minister directly to the weak limbs of our growing stock, and at pleasure 

 to provide the spare-boned animal with the materials out of which a 

 limb of great strength might be built up. 



Chemical analysis comes further to our aid in pointing out the kind 

 of food we ought to give for the purpose of increasing this or that part 



