Rearing Calves for Stock.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 15 May 1914, Page 2

Rearing Calves for Stock.

(By PROFESSOR LONG.) With few exceptions breeders of cattle feed calves intended for veal with a liberality which they deny to calves intended for stock. There is no greater mistake. Although it is the wisest plan to feed a fatting calf as well as possible, it is equally as wise a practice to be generous in feeding calves for stock. A man who rears his calves as stores for others to fatten for beef leaves the profit to them, for I question if he ever makes a penny. A Suffolk farmer I knew of, reared pedigree bull calves for sale, and his custom was to keep them with their dam until they were a year old, when they were frequently fit for service. These yearling bulls were equal in size and value to many reared by

other men at two years old

The practice of weaning- a calf at an early age ivnd feoding it upon skimmed milk with o little added meal, and subsequently turning it out to grass on summer days and feeding upon hay and a little cake or oats at night, fails to achieve the desired end.

A calf should never lose its calf flesh, nor should it ever look back a day from birth to slaughter or the time of calving. Being v.-ell fed, it should be growing all the time and always making money.

One of the best methods of rearing a calf is to take it from its dam at three to four days old, to feed it upon skimmed milk, which may. reach 2 to 2i gallons a day—during the last portion of the milk-feeding season—given at three meals and mixed with a jelly* prepared from linseed or linseed meal.

Equal quantities of linseed and water are mixed and boiled slowly for three hours. The mixture is then allowed to cool, when it forms a jelly.

This jelly may be added .to the milk in the proportion of a quarter to half a pint at a time, in accordance with the size of the calf. Linseed is extremely rich in oil, of which it contains about one-third of its weight ; hence, the fat removed from the milk is replaced.

As the calf commences to njt»ble a little hay, it may be supplied re.gularly with a handful of the sweetest to be found, supplemented by crushed oats, always given in smfl.ll quantities at a time in a clean trough or pan. Of these foods, hay and oats, the calf may obtain all it requires in reason, and there te go better food than crushed oats for rearing a calf successfully.

The milk and jelly feeding may continue for six months, by which time the calf will have learned to eat' plenty of hay and oats, and should there be a few mangels left over one or two may be pulped from time to.time and added to the corn, which may subsequently be supplemented by linseed cake when the jelly feeding has been completely abandoned.

It pays to rear good calves, but never unless they are reared well. Calves from inferior cows are much better made into veal.