TEACHING A CALF TO DRINK.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1345, 26 May 1885, Page 3

TEACHING A CALF TO DRINK.

Many a" Prairie Farmer reader, man as well as boy, will recognise the truthfulness, and enjoy the humor, of the following description of experience in giving a calf its first lessons of how to drink properly. We take it from the Irish Farmers’ Gazette : Those who have had the mournful experience know that there is nothing more trying to the temper than the operation of teaching a young calf to drink. The process is familiar to every man who has brought up a calf from infancy . You seize a pail of warm milk, go into the stable, catch the calf by the ears, back him into a corner, and bestride his neck. The idiot rather likes this, and while you are reaching for the pail he employs his time in slobbering the lower corners of your jacket. You discover what the blockhead is about and box his ears. You can’t help it. You feel that way, and let him have it. But the calf can’t tell for the life of him why he has been struck, and he gives a sudden and unexpected “ flounce.” He believes he will go and stay on the other side of the stable, but he doesn’t announce this beforehand. He starts on the impulse of the moment, and, you can’t tell just when he arrives there. You ride along with him a little way. But the laws of gravitation are always about the same. Your legs, one on each side of the critter, keep up with the calf for about a second, but your body doesn’t. You slide over the calf and your back kisses the floor. Your head is soaking in the pail of milk. When you get up you are mad—uncommonly so. Milk runs from your hair, and imprecations out of your mouth, and you solemnly declare that you will teach that calf to drink or break his neck. The calf doesn’t know of this resolve, and he glares at you in a stupid fright across the stable. He is not aware that he is the cause of your downfall, and wonders ignorantly what is the matter. You don’t try to explain it to him, but furiously catch him by the ears, look back over your shoulder at the milk pail, and back up.towards it, dragging the’calf after you. The calf is out of wind, and you haven’t a particle of grace left in your heart. You are astride the calf’s neck, and jamming the finger of one hand into his mouth, you place the other on the back, of his head and shove his nose into the pail, fully resolved to strangle him if he don’t drink. The calf holds perfectly still—ominously so—and there is silence for the space of half a minute, at the end of which time the blockhead, who hasn’t drank a drop, suddenly makes a splurge, knocks the pail over; you are again reduced to a horizontal from perpendicular, and when you rise the excitement is intense. You have been soaked with milk, “slobbered ” on, and hurt. Not a drop of milk has gone down the brute’s throat, and there he stands glaring at you, ready to furnish you with another free ride whenever you want to go. With an affidavit you seize the empty pail, and hobble out of the pen, fully resolved to let the four-footed fool starve ; and thus endeth the first lesson.