ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. I 87 



Calves to have good digestion should not be allowed to do this 

 as it retards their growth. Every day of the calf's life, from the 

 time it is born until two years old and fresh, it is never allowed to 

 go hungry at all. Tliey are forced to grow ; we don't give them a 

 ration that fattens them, but provides them thoroughly with feed 

 every day and year. 



As soon as the young heifers come into the milk barn, or 

 about two weeks before fresh, they go through their preliminary 

 schooling for milk cows. Udders are handled and teats anointed 

 w^ith vaseline every day, and the attendant who is going to milk 

 those heifers handles them and no one else. By the time we 

 freshen them, they do not know any different that to be milked 

 at once, and they do not object; we don't break heifers, no such 

 term used. 



The cows and the heifers are fed carefully, and my son who 

 feeds the calves, feeds the heifers and being well acquainted with 

 those animals from birth,, he knows them as individuals and feeds 

 them up to their capacity. When I use that phrase, I do not 

 mean that we gorge our cattle. I mean the limit of capacity, 

 what an animal will digest and pay for and gives a profit. The 

 milk cows are never allowed to want for green feed twelve months 

 in the year. If pasture becomes useless in summer, we resort to 

 silo or soil crops. Peas and oats we feed after blue grass be- 

 comes tough. 



The peas you raise in this country are a splendid feed and 

 better peas than the Canada peas. I will just mention putting 

 some peas on the corn stubble and then put on the plow and plow 

 under about four inches deep. And then put on about forty 

 pounds of oats with them. But in one bushel of peas to forty 

 pounds of oats. By the 10th day of June you should have a crop 

 or perhaps the 1st day of June, depends on the soil. The crop 

 with us will make from eight to twelve tons per acre, and it is a 

 grand good soil restorer. For our next soiling crops we go to our 

 corns. Peas and oats will last until 20th or 25th of June and 

 what you have left will make first-class hay. Then you take your 

 crop of corn for a soiling crop and then comes millet and sorghum 



