FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION 307 



RAISING CALVES ON SKIM MILK. 



O. E. Reed, Dairy Husbandman, Kansas State Agricultural 



College. 



In many localities a great deal of money is lost each year by 

 feeding calves on whole milk, or by letting them suck the cows. 

 This is often due to the fact that those who practice such meth- 

 ods do not believe good calves can be raised on skim milk. They 

 rather picture the skim-milk calf as being a small, unhealthy, 

 stunted individual that is absolutely worthless. Many such cases 

 can be found. However, such results should not be charged up 

 to the skim milk, but rather to the ignorance or carelessness of 

 the feeder. It has been shown that as good calves can be raised 

 on skim milk as with whole milk. Several years ago the Kansas 

 Experiment Station carried on exper-iments to demonstrate the 

 value of skim milk as compared with whole milk as a food for 

 calves. Thirty calves were divided into three groups. One lot 

 was fed on skim milk, another on whole milk, and still another 

 lot was nursed by their mothers. The following table shows the 

 results of these experiments: 



Experiment. 









Skim milk lo 154 223 1.5 1 ' $2.26 



Whole milk 10 154 287 1.86 7.60 



Running with dam... 10 154 248 1.77 4.41 



The calves nursed by their dams and those fed whole milk 

 made slightly better gains than those fed on skim milk, but it 

 was at much greater expense. The skim-milk calves consumed 

 122 pounds of grain per hundred pounds of gain, while the 



