118 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASiSOCTATIQiN. 



whole milk and half skim milk, warmed to about 98 to 100 de- 

 grees, feeding only twice a day. The third week we give 

 the calf all separator skim milk and about a teaspoonful of 

 ground flax, thrown into the milk before it is set before the 

 calf. From then on we increase the skim milk and the flax 

 according to the growth of the calf. 



Mr. West: Is this what we call oil meal, that we feed 

 to our dairy cows? 



Prof. Haecker: No; you feed oil meal to your dairy cows; 

 this is ground flax. I remember some four years ago, I 

 bought half a dozen sacks of ground flax. I was raising 

 from twenty to thirty calves that winter, and I have got con- 

 siderable of it. It is very inexpensive. It contains 40 per 

 cent, of oil, which replaces the butter fat that we have taken 

 out of the milk. 



Mr. Hostetter: Do jon cook this flaxseed meal? 



Prof. Haecker: No; we object to cooking or boiling it, 

 because it is apt to get sour, and you throw in a little of that 

 sour stuff and the next day the calf has got the scours and 

 the third day you are burying it. There is no reason why it 

 should be cooked, any more* than there is any reason why you 

 should cook your grain or hay for your cow. Now, in regard 

 to roughage. We give the calf hay as soon as it wants it, and 

 we give it about all it wants to eat. If we have not hay we 

 give it fodder corn, about all it wants. We give no grain 

 whatever to dairy calves. Two winters I fed the calves a 

 ration of grain and I came very near ruining those two crops of 

 calves. They were great beauties, everybody admired them 

 because they were so smooth and nice, but they had acquired 

 a habit of laying on flesh, and it was very difficult to get them 

 over it. I have abandoned grain feeding entirely to dairy 

 calves, simply giving skim milk, flax seed meal and the 

 roughage. In spring our calves will get about a heaping 

 tablespoonful of ground flax in each ration of milk, about 12 

 to 15 pounds. Our calves come from about the first of Octo- 

 ber to the fifteenth of November ; they are fed that way during 

 the winter; in the spring they are let out to pasture and no 

 more attention paid to them until fall. They come up then, 

 are ready to be placed in the barn and bred, and then they 



