AUTUMN CARE OF YOUNG STOCK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LIII, Issue 5917, 12 February 1880, Page 6

AUTUMN CARE OF YOUNG STOCK.

{North British Agriculturist.) Thousands of calves tolerably well reared while in the house, and while living mainly on milk, are seriously and even fatally injured by carelessness and parsimony in their subsequent management; and the same applies with equal force to foals and lambs. The young creature is perhaps suddenly turned nut to pasture ; its digestive apparatus is vainly expected at ones to accommodate itself to the change from the digestible concentrated milk to the less digestible, fibrous/ bulky grass. For a time, at least, nutrition and growth are impaired, the blood sometimes become deficient in some of its important elements, the tissues are starved, the muscles are pale and soft, the walls of the intestines are thin and pellucid, diarrhoea sets in; while still further to reduce the weakened calf, irritation and cough are sometimes set up from thread worms invading the bronchial tubes. The anaemia, with all our boasted skill and management, still annually kills off thousands of calves and lambs. Yet these losses are easily preventable by supplying continuously regular suitable food, by more gradual weaning, by teaching the young animal before weaning to eat a-little bruised linseed cake or crushed oats, and continuing regularly after weaning the supplies of such concentrated adjuncts. Once the milk flesh is lost it is hard to say how many shillings per pound it costs to replace its equivalent. It is doubtful whether an animal thus stripped ofif a dainty handling calves’ flesh can ever be made quite so good, while this pulling down and building up treatment is attended with great risk or serious disease. A wasted and dangerous loss of flesh and strength similar to what is apt to follow weaning, too commonly results throughout the English grazing counties from keeping the young stock on the pastures in the late autumn, when the grass has lost much of its nutritive value, and the temperature of the air and ground has become materially reduced. Then the animals require for the maintenance of health extra, instead of diminished, supplies of food or fuel. Careful flockmasters usually avoid these risks by giving their lambs frequent changes of pasture untainted by other sheep; by placing them very early in autumn on cabbage and roots, and often by continuing the few ounces of cakes and dry food before weaning. Many foals and calves now lost or stunted in' growth would be preserved by similar treatment—by the early reasonable use of dry food, and, if they are not housed early in autumn, by sheds on the pastures, which are most valuable for shelter from extremes alike of heat and cold and from wet.