EARLY MATURITY OF FARM STOCK

Waikato Times, Volume XV, Issue 1246, 24 June 1880, Page 3

EARLY MATURITY OF FARM STOCK

By the common admission of all competent to form opinions on the matter (says an English writer), remunerative meat production cannot be insured at the present day without early maturity and rapid fattening. Young pigs, fed from birth and sent to the pork shops at about six weeks old, may be made to pay, but the production of bacon can only ba accomplished at a loss. Lambs taught to nibble oil cake as soon as they will eat anything, and kept steadily moving so that they fatten as they grow, may at about ten months old be brought to heavier weights of carcass than our fathers used to bring their sheep to after keeping them three or four years. And cattle feeding, to be rendered remunerative nvust-be-eenducted precisely in the same way. The calf must never be stinted of fond, but liave plenty of milk at first, and then milk and meal with a little oil cake. Aa he grows bigger and devours more of the natural food of the farm, whether it be hay and root £ ulp of green food, a portion of the milk may be taken off, or skim milk thickened with linseed meal, or linseed boiled to mucilage, may be substituted for the whole milk, but when this is done the allowance of oil take- should be increased. • The calf should at all times be fed so as to go on steadily putting^ on flesh more and more as it grows, never being allowed to have a check a^ 'any ,tfrnej but to enjoy one continuous progressive development with greater and still greater allowances of oil cake or meal, the result of which will be the production of two-year-old beef. Well-bred young steers and heifers, in short, may be ripened into tolerably good maturity at two years old, if only they are of the right strains of blood, for a great deal depends on this. Practical men of great experience are well aware what astonishing differences present themselves in the. capabilities of. animals to lay on flesh rapidly and arrive at maturity quickty. > Of a number of stock picked ud indiscriminately at a fair or market the proportion of "ne'er do well "ones would be large, while others would thrive to a wish. Here and there a few excellent judges of stock way be found capable of picking out the good doers from the bad at a glance ere their capabitities have been tried. But this is a rare gift and can scarcely be termed a feat of skill to be aqquired ; consequently the necessity of graziers who desire to produce two-year-old beef on a large scale rearing their own atock manifests itaslf .