EXPERIMENTS IN CALF FEEDING

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 390, 26 August 1911, Page 3

EXPERIMENTS IN CALF FEEDING

An interesting bulletin has been issued by the Cornell University Experiment Station containing the result of two years' experiments with substitutes for milk in calf-feeding. In this it is stated that during the test the calves were first given whole milk, after two days this was replaced by skim milk, with which they svere given as much as they could clean up, hay being available all the time. At the end of thirty days the calves were able to do without skim milk at all, anil this point is emphasised in the report as being the lesson taught by all the research into the subject. But, while it is perfect possible to do without any skim milk after the caif is a month old, when the milk is available it forms a leading portion of the best and must economic food for rearing calves. The ordinary dairy calf of the Shorthorn type, it is asserted, fed on skim milk, hay, and grain should, according to the test investigations yet made, reach a live weight of 25001bs at five months, and the gain should be made atfthe rate of Uibs per day and at a cost of from 2d to 2-Jd a day. The nearest substitute to this fooi in point of cost per daily gain produced a gain ofl |lbs per day, at a cost of 3d to 3|d. This was with dried skim milk powder, fed l as a substitute for skim milk until the calf was five months old. Bowel troubles are a source of much bother and loss in calfrearing, and in these experiments they were entirely prevented by giving a tablespoonful of soluble blood meal with each feed. This, we are told, is really blood from the slaughterhouse, dried and ground to a powder.Since this is comparatively inexpensive, it is believe that a wider use of it might be profitable.