THE REARING OF CALVES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 837, 8 June 1910, Page 8

THE REARING OF CALVES.

AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS. Jinny investigations have been made in ree'eut years in order to see if economical substitutes for milk and skim-milk in calf-rearing cannot be found. The latest report on the subject is a rather elaborate one from tlie Cornell Experiment Station, this not only giving tlie results of two years' experiments at the station, but also a review of the work done in the matter at other experiment stations. Practic- • ally, the work at the Cornell Station was to test the best methods as shown by experiments elsewhere, although various substitutes were .included in the trial. Dairy calves of a Shorthorn typo were used in. the experiment, and these were first given whole milk, but after the first day or two this was gradually replaced by skim-milk, with which they were also fed. a mixture of ground maize, oat's, bran, and oil meal, of which they were from the first given as much as they would eat up clean, hay being kept before them ail the time. At the end of thirty days the calves were able to do without skim-milk at all, and it is laid down as the lesson of all the American research in the matter that "strong, healthy calves can be raised without skim-milk, or any milk at all, after tho first thirty days from birth." In the Cornell experiments, the next best food, to substitute for .whole milk, where skimmilk is not available, is a third-grade dried skim-milk powder. But while it is perfectly possible to do without any sltim-milk after the calf is a month old, when it is available, it forms a leading portion of the best and. most economic food for rearing calves. .An ordinary dairy calf of the Shorthorn type, fed on skim T milk, hay and grain, should, according to ■the best investigations yet made, reach a weight of 5001b. at five months old, and the gaiu should be made at the rate of.Ulb. per day, and at a cost of from 2d. to 21d. a day. The nearest substitute to this food, in point of cost per, daily gain, produced a gain of ljlb. per day at a cost of 3d. to 3Jd. This was with the' dried skimmilk powder, fed as . a substitute for skim-milk until tho calf was Jive months old.' Bowel troubles are a source of much bother and loss in calf-rearing, and in these experiments they were entirely prevented 'by giving a tablespoonful of soluble blood meal with each feed. This, it' is stated, is really, blood • from a slaughter-house, • dried and ground to a powder. ' Since this is comparatively inexpensive, it is believed that a wider use of it might .be profitable.