A COW AND HER FIRST CALF.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2052, 29 May 1890, Page 3

A COW AND HER FIRST CALF.

The common practice of allowing a cow to suckle her first calf is not a wise or profitable one, and should be avoided. It tends to injure her as a milker ever afterwards. “ Duncan’s Live Stock Magazine, ” dealing with the subject says :—Cows are largely the creatures of habit, and with their first calf everything is new and strange to them, and they readily submit to he milked, and .think it all right; but suffer them to run with the. calf the first season, and a habit is established that they will not forget in a lifetime. If they ever after submit to be milked quietly it is evidently under protest. But there is a greater objection than this. The calf running with the cow draws the milk every hour or two, so that the milk vessels are not distented with milk, though the quantity secreted in a given time may be large. And yet it is the natural time to distend the milk ducts and expand the udder to a good capacity for holding milk. When, with the next calf, you require the milk to be retained for 12 hours, the udder becomes hard and painful, and the milk leaks from the teats, or, more likely, nature accommidates the quantity of the milk secreted to the capacity to retain it, and the cow becomes permanently a small milker. Much of the future character of the cow, therefore, depends on the treatment of her first calf.