246 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



Wanzer, of Elgin Creamery, Illinois, in feeding this whey 

 ration to a large number of calves. He used oil-meal, oats 

 and bran with whey after the calf was four weeks old. He 

 raised 120 calves in 1876 on this diet, and sold them at an 

 average of about $21 per head, at seven months old. The 

 farmer cannot properly object that it requires grain under 

 this mode of feeding, because he raises his grain with a 

 view to realizing so much money from it, and the money 

 will come more surely by feeding it to calves than selling 

 in market. It is not good farming to sell grain, when 

 more money can be made from feeding it to animals and 

 selling the animals. It is time American farmers had 

 changed their system of raising so largely of grain to sell 

 in market, and adopted the better English system of rais- 

 ing all the coarse grain required in the rotation, and buy- 

 ing all they can economically use in addition, to feed out 

 on the farm, that the land may be kept good if not 

 improved. 



HAY TEA RATION FOB CALVES. 



This old expedient to .rear calves without milk had an 

 excellent basis, as do most common practices. The solu- 

 ble nutritive constituents of the hay are extracted by boil- 

 ing, and this extract contains all the food elements required 

 to grow the animal, besides being as digestible as milk. If 

 the hay is cut early, when it has most soluble matter, and 

 is of good quality, the tea will grow good calves ; but this 

 extract frequently has too small a proportion of albumin- 

 ous and fatty matter. Yet if the hay tea is boiled down so 

 as not to contain too much water for the dry substance, 

 calves will usually thrive upon it. We tried an experiment 

 by feeding 2 gallons of hay tea, in which M lb. of flax-seed 

 and i^ lb. of wheat middlings had been boiled, to each of 5 

 calves 30 days old. This experiment was continued 60 days, 

 with a gradual increase, during the last 30 days, of the 

 middlings to 1 lb. per day. These calves did remarkably 



