FARM AND GARDEN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 311, 12 November 1910, Page 6

FARM AND GARDEN.

RICHNESS OF STRIPPING 3

The simple assertion that the strippings are the best of the milk will be emphasised by something in the way of reason for it. To begin with, the secretion of the milk in a cow's storage department is a mystery not yet fully understood. As is the case in all such mysterious processes of Nature, there are experts who have the explanation ready, and are glib-tongued in giving it. But the fact remains, they know very little about it. It is wisely speculated that the process is not very unlike that of blood-making, with the difference that the red corpuscles of the blood are replaced by white corpuscles of fat, and the change may take place in the milk gland. The udder is full of selecting milk material, and making milk of what is conveyed to them by the digestive processes and from the circulatory system. The milk stored in the bag begins to separate at once, and thus the first drawing is what may be termed the skim; the strippings are the cream.

Where the cow is sucked by the calf there is no storing of the milk in the bag, and the quality is fairly eyen. The irritation of the gland caused by the attentions of the calf makes for an increase of the flow, and it is possible that, while the cow is rearing the calf, she produces more milk than she gives in the bail; for the reason that, in the one case, the glands are kept busy all the time, and in the other there is no excitation to production; and, where the bag is emptied but twice a day, and not, as with the calf, kept empty, there is a reserve of milk in the bag, on the surface oE which the cream forms in fats, rising in practically the same way as when the milk is drawn set- —except that, in the natural store, the rising of the cream is continuous and immediate on the formation of the milk, and in the dish the cream takes from 12 to 36 hours to rise.

TO FEED CALVES. A feed of skim milk, fresh from the farm separator, morning and night. When fed they are put in small bail enclosures for, say an hour. Following the skim milk is a pint or so of oats or crushed barley and bran. Then a fesd of fresh, sweet hay, preferably lucerne hay, is put in the manger; the bails are opened and the calves run free in the well bedded pen. Handled in this way, they do not take on the habit of sucking one another. This bad habit should be broken at once, if started. Be careful not to over-feed. It is better to keep the calves a little hungry. Be careful that they have plenty of clean water to drink. See to it that the skim milk pails are rinsed and scalded daily. Many a calf has lost its life from a foul skim milk pail. Handled in thn way, we should rarely have a calf gel; off its feed. We wish to emphasise the importance of clean, dry quarters for calves and young cattle. To get the best results from feeding linseed and skim milk to calves, they should get a good start with new milk, then one tablespoonful of linseed jelly in skim milk, fed twice a day. They should also got plenty of good grass or fine hay, clover or lucerne being the best. As soon as they will eat it, it will pay to give as much grain as they will take. To prepare flax seed jelly one cupful of seed to three pints of boiling water; keep just below the boil for three to four hours. It will be found an ad vantage to feed a little wheat meal or flojr with the linseed.