262 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



Cleanliness of Pails and Utensils. 



Scours are often caused, no doubt, by a filthy condition o^ 

 the feeding pail or trough. Unclean milk or milk out of unclean, 

 vessels will cause trouble. It is best to give the calf pails the 

 same treatment and attention accorded the regular milk pails; 

 They should be kept sweet smelling. 



Temperature of the Milk. 



Milk should always be fed at a temperature near that of 

 blood heat, or between 95° and 100° F. This is the temperature 

 at which the calf would receive the milk if it were sucking the. 

 cow. Cold milk taken into a young calf's stomach so chills it| 

 that digestive processes are checked for a time and digestive dis- 

 turbances are liable to follow. 



Calves that have reached the age of two and one-half or 

 three months may be fed milk somewhat colder than 95°, but in 

 any case the temperature should be constant and a calf should 

 not receive warm milk at one feed and cold milk at the next. 



A thermometer should actually be used in testing the tem- 

 perature of the milk— at least often enough so that the tempera- 

 ture can be estimated fairly accurately. 



Overfeeding. 



Probably the most frequent cause of scours is overfeeding. 

 When properly fed the appetite of the calf will be more keeiif 

 after talking its milk than before. It is impossible to satisfy a 

 calf's appetite for milk without overfeeding it. Overfeeding at 

 any particular feed is best guarded against by actually weighing 

 the milk at each feed or measuring it in a vessel sufficiently small 

 to avoid guesswork. Weighing is to be preferred, as the foam 

 which occurs on separator milk makes accurate measuring dif- 

 cult. 



If several calves are being fed in the same pen it is best to 

 have ties of some sort for them so 'that each calf may receive 

 only its apportioned feed. For this purpose small, rigid stan- 



