THE TREATMENT OF MILKING HEIFERS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 206, 9 July 1879, Page 2

THE TREATMENT OF MILKING HEIFERS.

A writer in the American Agriculturist makes the following remarks upon this subject:—" Upon the treatment of heifers with their first calves depends very much the quality and value of the future cow. This is not so often considered as it should be. The milkinghabit is a matter of training and education , and one can make or mar his cows by the manner in which he manages them. When young, the custom now is to bring a heifer into milking before, or very, soon after, it is two years old. It is then plastic in its owner's hands than if older and more fully grown. It is immature, and therefore not able to bear the strain of frequent maternity, nor to attain its proper growth, unless well fed with proper fod. A habit of long continued milking, too, can only be fastened upon the young animal by postponing the second pregnancy for some months longer .than is usual with an older animal. It is thus best not to permit a heifer to bear-a second calf under eighteen months after the first one. The milking period is thus lengtheded out to sixteen months in place of ten, as is usual, and this habit of continuous milking becomes fixed. The heifer should also be fed plentifully with nutritious food, so that it may be enabled to contiune its growth, Mid to produce milk copiously. As long as milk can be drawn from the udder this should be done, if it is only a pint of each milking. The continued manipulation of the udderin the act of milking tends to stimulate the secretion, as in fact it wil do in a virgin calf, as it has actually hapl pened'in numerous cases in which the suction of other calves, or the playin» at milking by children with pet calves brought then to milk at ages from seven to ten months, and before they have been old enough to breed,