42 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[February, 
solid, large sized, small boned, and have large 
hams. But for indiscriminate crossing, we ad- 
vise the Suffolks. The breeder who makes hogs 
a study, and carefully selects males to improve 
certain points in his herd, will, of course, select 
boars from the Suffolks, Berkshires, Essex, or 
other breeds, to suit the end for which his hogs 
are bred, and the market his produce seeks. 
Hints on Raising Calves. 
Calves are raised for veal, or to become 
milk producers, or to bear the yoke, or still 
unbroken to be used as beef. Where the 
production of veal is most profitable, it is usu- 
ally best to give each good cow two calves to 
feed, and let them run with her and have all the 
milk they will draw. In winter and early 
spring, this can not be done, and the calves 
must be brought to the cow three times a day 
for the first week or fortnight, and twice a day 
after that ; if the calves leave any milk, the cow 
should be thoroughly stripped each time. This 
plan saves much labor in milking, and so soon 
as -one pair of calves has been sold to the 
butcher, another pair may take their places. 
Cows will usually own any calves given to them 
after one or two milking times, and they may 
then be left to run together in the pasture. The 
calves should be nearly of an age. No cow that 
will not give plenty of milk for two calves, ought 
to be kept for any thing but beef; and it is an 
excellent plan to make the short-teated cows 
nurses in this way. The calves which are to be 
raised either for beef or breeding, should have 
all the milk after they are 6 or 8 weeks old. 
Where butter is made, and the milk can not 
be spared to the calf, the plan of a correspond- 
ent of the Agriculturist may be followed. He 
writes : " Shortly after the calf is dropped, 
take it from the cow and put it in a dry, well 
littered stable. Part of each day, it should be 
allowed the range of some adjoining yard, for 
exercise. By separating cow and calf thus 
early, the former is sooner weaned from her 
offspring, and the latter learns to drink milk 
more easily than if allowed to suck for several 
days. Milk the cow at once, and feed the calf 
all it will drink. To teach it to drink, give- it 
your fore-finger with the back of the hand im- 
mersed in the pail of milk ; a few trials will 
suffice. During the third week, give about one 
quarter of skimmed milk ; in the fourth week, 
one half, and after the sixth week, let it be all 
skimmed, but sweet and as warm as newly 
drawn milk. After two months, weaning from 
milk should begin. Feed a little Indian meal 
wet up in milk or water. Give once a day, a 
little soft, sweet hay; he will soon learn to 
nibble it. A pint of oats per day may early 
be given. Soon he will learn to eat grass, and 
then in good pasture, will take care of himself." 
The practice of removing the calf from the 
dam we do not commend, though it is very gen- 
erally practised. After the labors and trial of 
maternity the cow ought to have the satisfac- 
tion of suckling her offspring, at least so long as 
it is necessary for the calf to have nothing but 
pure milk. The cow will often worry and pine 
if the calf be taken away too soon, and a ten- 
dency to garget or caked bag is often the result. 
Moreover, if the calf be fastened in a calf-pen 
or elsewhere, and allowed to go to the cow 
three times a day, entire separation will be 
much more easily borne after a few days. 
Where the milk is sold, and it is best to wean 
the calf from the cow as speedily as possible, it 
may be removed after a few hours. Meanwhile 
the cow will have licked it and nosed it to her 
heart's content, giving the little thing a notion of 
matters and things about it, setting its blood in 
circulation, and getting it well on its feet. The 
calf will have taken its first meal, and " butted 
down the bag," as they say. The first milk 
should never be withheld from the calf; utterly 
unfit for human food, it is aperient in its action, 
and cleans out the bowels of the calf as no 
medicine can. Serious results follow, if this 
does not take place ; in case the bowels do 
not move, a dose of two ounces of castor oil, 
with a teaspoonful of ginger, ought to be admin- 
istered. The removal of. the dark, gummy 
faeces with which the bowels of a newly born 
calf are more or less filled, is very important. 
After the calf is removed, it is kept away from 
the cow except at meal times, three times a day. 
After about the third or fourth day, it may well 
be taught to drink from a pail. The milk must 
be freshly drawn at first, the next day, part 
skimmed milk may be used, and by the time it 
is a week old, it may be fed on skimmed milk 
altogether. Then begin to add a little thin 
gruel, being careful to check any tendency to 
scouring, by scalding part of the milk with a lit- 
tle fine flour. Bran added to the gruel is loos- 
ening; fine wheat flour and boiled milk have 
the opposite tendency. So that with careful 
watching, a calf may be easily set right with- 
out physic. Where calves run with the cow, and 
can nibble grass a little, they seldom have any 
ailments. After a calf is three weeks old, and 
often earlier, the milk may be withheld alto- 
gether, and a tea made of clover hay used to 
mix with the gruel. In this way a calf may be 
fatted for the butcher or raised successfully, but 
it will usually be more economical to feed milk, 
unless it is worth more than 2 cents per quart. 
Cost of Fattening Beef. 
The present high price of corn at the West, 
owing to extensive injury from frost last seasou, 
must seriously interfere with the fattening of 
beef and pork in those regions. An Illinois 
farmer presents in the Chicago Times the follow- 
ing statement of how it works. He says that 
any ordinary cow or steer, will eat up in value 
double or treble the present price paid .for the 
very best beef in the market, before it can be 
made fat. For instance, it will take about 80 
bushels of good corn, beside at least a ton of good 
hay, to fatten a lean steer weighing 1000 lbs., to 
weigh 1400 lbs. The account may be stated thus : 
One lean steer of 1000 lbs is worth at 23£c $25.00 
80 bushels of corn are now worth at 90c 72.00 
1 ton of hay now worth 10.00 
Labor and trouble of feeding four months 3.00 
Interest for 4 months on the above $110 3.66 
Total .-$U3.G6 
Therefore, to pay actual cost and expenses, 
the steer, when fat, must be sold for $113.66. 
After having put his steer through the above 
process, he should weigh about 1,400 lbs. for 
which the highest market price is $4.50 per 100 
lbs, live weight* realizing for the steer, when fat, 
just $63.00, which deducted from the $113.66, 
the value of the steer, before feeding, pro- 
vender, etc., leaves instead of any profit the 
round sum of $50.66 actual loss in one steer. 
Hence, the correspondent concludes that the 
farmer who sells his corn and hay, and his 
cattle unfattened at $2.50 per hundred pounds, 
makes the most money. He adds : " There are 
certain indices which I think it would be well for 
both farmer and cattle dealer to observe ; they 
may be stated thus : To make oue pound of beef 
or pork requires six pounds of good corn, fed in 
the most economical manner. When corn is 
worth 10 cents per bushel, six pounds are worth 
one cent ; consequently you eau make corn and 
beef at one cent per pound when corn is worth 
but 10 cents. When corn is worth 20j3ents, six 
pounds of corn are worth two cents, and your 
beef will cost you two cents per pound, and 
consequently, when corn is worth $1 per bushel, 
you can not make a pound of beef or pork for 
less than 10 cents. And, at these figures, there 
is left no profit to the farmer for all his labor." 
Important Fact in Breeding. 
At a recent session of the Massachusetts Board 
of Agriculture, Prof. Agassiz gave an account of 
several experiments made to ascertain the influ- 
ence exerted by the sire upon the future progeny 
of the dam. He coupled a water-dog with a 
Newfoundland slut. Part of the resulting litter 
showed the external marks of the sire, another 
portion more resembled the dam, and the remain- 
der partook of both breeds. A second litter 
was bred from the same slut by a greyhound, 
and the pups were almost precisely like the first 
litter, part Newfoundland, part water-dog, with 
scarcely a trace of the greyhound. Similar re- 
sults were obtained with rabbits of different 
varieties. This appears to indicate that the 
first fecundation of the female is not confined 
in all its results to the immediate progeny, but ex- 
tends to the further issue. The idea is not new, 
but additional proof from such a high quarter 
is valuable. Every one can readily see its ap- 
plication in breeding farm stock. Great disap- 
pointment has often been felt by parties who 
have paid largely for the services of well-bred 
sires, because the resulting issue has shown 
little likeness to the male parent, and the latter 
has been condemned as a poor stock-getter. 
It is possible that in such cases the*results were 
caused by the female having previously borne 
young by an animal essentially differing from 
the sire subsequently employed, and thus hav- 
ing been rendered incapable of producing true 
offspring to any very dissimilar animal. If so, 
it is an additional reason for securing the use 
of well-bred animals, especially for the first 
progeny of any female. The expansion and 
conformation of the productive organs may 
perhaps be permanently affected by the cha- 
racter of the first progeny. 
Profit of Flax Culture- 
The Annual Report of the Worcester (Mass.) 
Agricultural Society for 1863 contains the fol- 
lowing statement of the expense and product of 
136 square rods (a little over | of an acre) pf 
flax, grown by Aaron Kimball : 
Dr. 
Plowing $ 2.00 
Harrowing 2.00 
13 Loads Manure 13.00 
130 lbs of Guano 4.55 
1 Bushel Seed 3.75 
Sowing 1.00 
Pulling Flax 11.25 
Taking off Seed 4.00 
Cleaning Seed 1.00 
Dressing Flax 12.03 
Cr. 
401 lbs Flax $106.26 
130 lbs Tow 5.20 
8 Bushel Seed 36.86 
Total Product $148.20 
Deduct Expense. .. $54.58 
Profit .$93.6 R 
The land cultivated was a kind of sandy 
gravel, dry and easily worked. It had been 
in pasture 40 or 50 years, and was not in very 
productive condition. It was plowed up the 
previous fall, and harrowed in the spring. 
Further details of culture are not given. The 
value of the unspent manure after removing the 
flax, was reckoned to more than pay the in- 
terest on cost of land, and this item was there- 
fore omitted in the account. 
