238 



Fattening Calves in Belgium. 



[JULY, 



In the Board's Journal for March, 1905, an article on calf 

 rearing dealt with the methods practised on a North-country 

 farm, while other notes on the subject have 

 Fattening- Calves appeared from time to time* Various 



country, but it has long been recognised that for general pur- 

 poses new milk continued for long is too expensive as a calf 

 food. In a paper read before the International Congress on 



Alimentation Rationelle du Betail at Liege in 1905, M. Fr. 

 Smeyers gave an account of the system adopted in certain 

 districts of Belgium where the fattening of calves is conducted 

 on a large scale. In the neighbourhood of Louvain calves are 

 fattened with partially skimmed milk which has been set for six 

 or eight hours. Such skim milk contains a large proportion of 

 fat, and has therefore been found very suitable for the purpose. 

 As a general rule the calves are fed exclusively on such milk. 

 Feeding with whole milk as formerly practised is tending to dis- 

 appear, as it is found not to pay. This was shown by an 

 experiment carried out in 1 891, on a farm at Diest, in which 

 twenty-two calves were fed on whole milk. The average daily 

 gain in live weight varied from r8 lb. to 3*2 lb., and the return 

 obtained for the milk utilized in this way amounted to an average 

 of 4'45d. per gallon only. On another farm five calves consumed 

 931 gallons of milk containing an average of 3*3 per cent, of fat, 

 producing 998'6 lb. of live weight, giving a return for the milk of 

 nearly 5d. per gallon, and it is observed that at such figures 

 farmers are well advised not to feed whole milk to calves. 



In skimming by the process usually practised on Belgian 

 farms, milk of a fat content of 3*2 per cent, retains about 1*36 

 per cent, of its fat (a mean of fifty analyses). It is such par- 

 tially skimmed milk which the farmers of the Hageland employ 

 for fattening purposes, and from numerous personal experiments 

 M. Smeyers states that calves fed exclusively on this milk 

 consume on the average gallons to produce i lb. live weight. 

 Sixteen calves so fattened consumed an average of almost 

 exactly that figure, their sale price being about 5d. per lb. live 

 weight, or, calculated in terms of milk, about 2*97d. ppr gallon. 

 On adding the value of the butter produced from the cream 



in Belgrium. 



methods prevail in different parts of the 



Journal, April, 1904. p. 39 ; March, 1904, p. 526; September, 1903, p. 210. 



