NOTES ON FARMERS’ CATTLE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2204, 19 March 1881, Page 3

NOTES ON FARMERS’ CATTLE.

Milkers. —To develop milking properties or to perpetuate them, breed with bulls descended from milking families. Keep the cows constantly in milk for from nine to ten months, giving plenty of good stimulating and milk-producing food, summer and winter. Heifers must come in young—my Jerseys do at two years —and be kept in milk ten months with their first calf, that the milking organisation may be kept in full play for as long a period as possible. Service of Cows. —It may not bo possible to force nature into any particular channel, but the experience of breeders has settled upon the practice of taking advantage of the first period of the cow’s readiness —not always the first coming in season—to insure the production of a heifer. It is noted that when a bull runs with the herd, there are more heifers than of the other sex, owing to the service at the earliest moment they are in season. Cows should not, as a general rule, be served the first time they come round after calving, but be put off until they are again in season, as they are more likely to stand the service and lass likely to be injured. After service_ tie or shut up the cow, and not let her mix with the herd for twenty-four hours. Calves. —After the calf has been with the dam a couple of days, if there is no sign of garget in the bag of the lalter, teach it to feed from the pail and to bo led familiarly with the halter. If the dam’s bag is hard and will not yield to the hand-rubbing, let the calf in to suck and bunt three times a day until the hardness is removed, stripping the teats well after each nursing. Bull calves reared at the pail, at a year old will show a finer head and dewlap than if allowed to nurse, as in the latter performance they are obliged to hold their heads down and necks stretched out so as to occasion too much loose skin. They should have good milk every day until turned to grass, and at a year old have a ring in the nose. A cslf of either sex will take, from the first to the third week, four to six quarts of milk daily ; from the third to the sixth week, six to eight quarts ; from the sixth to the eighth week, ten to twelve quarts. Keep before them in a little box which they cannot tread in some wheat bran, and give them access to a little fine hay after they are a month old, A mixture of wheat bran, ground oats, and oil meal, allowing a couple of quarts a day to eaeh calf, is excellent food for the youngsters as they grow, and will assist in weaning them from the milk when that is needed for other purposes, or keep them in condition when skimmed milk is substituted for fresh, as it is on most dairy farms after thr. e or four weeks. No matter how fine the breed is, the calf must be raised on rich, nourishing food to develop its milking qualities as well as its growth, and an animal stinted during its first year in its natural food, seldom recovers. Cleanliness is of the first importance, and freedom from vermin. I see now before me a cow of the best pedigree and the richest of milkers, which has never developed in size and form and has remained weak and poor because, whilst a growing heifer, she was neglected, and the lice and dirt allowed by a careless stableman to overrun her. Salt in a small quantity once a day is better for all tbe animals than largo quantities less often, and a little sulphur mixed with it—say one-half to three-quarters of a pound to each cow during the winter—will do them good, and sulchur well rubbed through the hair will keep off the lice from cleanly herds when the cows are well fed, bedded and carded.