EARLY MATURITY OF FARM STOCK.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1971, 18 June 1880, Page 2

EARLY MATURITY OF FARM STOCK.

By the common admission of all competent to form opinions on the matter (eays an English writer), remunerative meat production cannot be insured at the present day without early maturity and rapid fattening. Young pigs, fed from birth and sent to the pork shops at about six weeks old, may be made to pay, but the production of bacon can only be accomplished at a loss. Lambs taught to nibble oil cake as soon as they will eat anything, and kept steadily moving so that they fatten as they grow, may at about ten months old be brought to heavier weights of carcass than our fathers used to bring their sheep to after keeping them three or four years. And cattle feeding, to be rendered remunerative, must be conducted precisely in the same way. The calf must never be stinted of food, but have plenty of rsilk at first, and then milk and meal with a little oil cake. As he grows bigger and devours more of the natural food of the farm, whether it be hay and root pulp or green food, a portion of the milk may be taken off, or skira-milk thickened with linseed meal, or linseed boiled to mucilage, may be substituted for the whole milk, but when this is done the allowance of oil cake should be increased. The calf should at all times be fed so as to go on steadily putting on flesh more and more as it grows, never being allowed to have a check at any time, bet to enjoy ono continuous,progressive development, with greater and still greater allowances of oil cake or meal, the result of which will be the production of two-year-old beef. Well-bred young steers and heifers, in short, may bo ripened into tolerably good maturity at two years old, if only they ore of the right strains of blood, for a greet deal depends on this. Practical men of great experience are well aware what astonishing differences present themselves in the capabilities of animals to lay oa flesh rapidly and arrive at maturity quickly. Of a number of stock picked up indiscriminately at a fair or market lh« proportion of “ne’er do well” ones world be large, while others would thrive to a wish. Here and there a few excellent judges of stock may be found capable of picking out the good doers from the bad at a glance ere their capabilities have been tried. But this is a rare gift and can scarcely be termed a feat of skill to be acquired; consequently the necessity of graziers who desire to produce two-year-old beef on a largo scale rearing their own stoek manifests itself