CALF FEEDING

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1298, 29 November 1911, Page 10

CALF FEEDING

A PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION. ' As an illustl-ation .of hovr to rear calve?, thero was exhibited at tbe recent; Waikato Show a heifer bearing a card, oil which the fallowing was inscribed:— "This heifer Ruth was calved on May !), 1910, aud she 'is. the first calf of a heifer from a typical dairy herd. • She never sucked. Ruth was fed for seven days ou new milk; for five days morn she received half new; and for a furthei' fifteen days skiriimdd milk only, but she 'was tied up where she could get young grass. On .luiie 5, 1910 (twenty-seven days later), Ruth was turned away with a mob of eighty steers on grass and turnips, aud she has received neither inilk nor special feeding since. Ruth is hero to demonstrate the impoi-tar.ee of providing clean young grass pasturage for calves as against the common way of herding them in old foul paddocks, and feeding for months 011 separated milk. It is not protended that Ruth is all a calf ought to be, but, considering her breeding nnd treatment, it must be -admitted that she is superior to the average dairy calf, which, has all the advantage of spring weather." Mr. J. D. t l . Morgan, the breeder of the heifer, presented Ruth for tho liveweight gnessing competition, the proceeds to-iie a nndeus for tho Waikato A. a.ud P. Association's new gTandstand fund. Mr. estimates that the pernicious way in which the ordinary dairyman feeds his cnlves causes, an* annu.'il Idss to the Dominion of nearly a quarter. of a million ponnds. Many thousands of calves die before they liccomc yearlings, and the survivors are worth to the grazier ,£2 per head less than wellreared animals should he. The average dairy-reared calf has now to bo gra.ied till four- yoirs old before it is fit for the butcher, which means that it has to bo >,kopt a year longer than it should, if prc- ! jierly treated durinj its infancy. Ruth is now eighteen months old, and l:as re- ' ceived no special feeding since weaning at ] four weeks old, further than grazing" on first year's grass and turnips. j She weighed alivo after twenty hours' fast 745 Mb. ■ This shows a monthly i.u- ---| feress# in weight of 40U>.. which is about, double the increase of average dairyman's I Cilves. , .