reaeijn'g calves for the dairy. 189 



are fastened, fed and treated as the cows are, being 

 handled, brushed and cleaned daily. This they submit 

 to without trouble, having been used to it in the calf 

 pens. At from nine to twelve months old they are bred, 

 and come in when from eighteen to twenty months old. 

 The feeding of a heifer should be liberal. She should 

 have regular rations of the feed prepared and given to 

 the cows, and about half as much of it will be eaten 

 profitably. Liberal feeding of good food develops the 

 digestive functions, and the training of a heifer for the 

 dairy should be such as to encourage the healthful dis- 

 posal of as much food as possible. It does not matter if 

 the heifer should get fat, if the growth is not stunted by 

 it. The gradual development of the normal figure of 

 the model cow should be watched,, and as long as this 

 development is going on satisfactorily the feeding may be 

 persevered in. Excessive fatness, however, is a bar to use- 

 fulness in the dairy, and when heifers with this tendency 

 to fat come in there is usually some defect which spoils 

 the animal for a cow. One such instance occurred in 

 the author's dairy. It was a pure bred Ayrshire, which 

 as a calf and up to twelve months old gave every prom- 

 ise of making an excellent cow. But she became very 

 fat, and up to her coming in grew rapidly in size and 

 rotundity. On calving the milk was blood and nothing 

 else, and the calf would not touch it. She w^as kept for. 

 four months in the hope that the milk organs would be- 

 come free from their unusual condition, but the secre- 

 tion of blood instead of milk continued. The secretion 

 was not milk at all, but an albuminous fluid highly 

 charged with the red corpuscles of the blood. Cream or 

 a fatty substance separated from the fluid, but it was red- ' 

 dish yellow in color, and made almost red butter. It 

 was a remarkable instance of abnormal action of the 

 milk glands, which had no power to secrete milk from 

 the blood passing through them, but merely discharged 



