RAISING DAIRY CALVES.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 573, 22 November 1897, Page 4

RAISING DAIRY CALVES.

Apropos of recent discussion here of the subject of raising dairy calves, it is well to study the methods pursued at the great stock farms where pedigreed cows are grown for sale. Of course the breeders must work for dairy form, production and vigor of constitution. Their systems have been learned by long experience, accompanied by scientific practices, and now tlie matter has reached a state as near perfection as man oan accomplish. Surely observation here should teach us about all there is to learn about it.

A writer in a Philadelphia paper reports how it is done at the Hood Jersey farm, Lowell, Massachussets. They allow the calf to remain with its dam until three or four days of age. It is then removed to a separate pen, which is well bedded with clean dry straw. Here it is taught to drink, and is given from five to seven quarts of its mother’s fresh milk per day, in three feeds. This amount is increased as fast as the calf will take it. There is kept constantly in reach of tho call a littlo nice, soft hay, and it is also allowed to eat at will a mixture of oats, bran and oil-meal. The feedpails. mangers and floor are kept sweet and clean. When the calf is live to six weeks of age, if it is doing well, skim milk is gradually substitut.d for whole milk, and the calf is removed to a larger pen, with others ' ’be samo size. Here they are given wbat bay? they will eat, and enough 0 f the grain mixture to k( -' e P them D in goon ow ‘ Dg condition. In connection witu v hese P^ 9 ’ whlc , h face the south, there are lar S e y ar , Js in which tho calves re 11 day, thus ensuring an abunuane" of pure air and plenty of oxercise, two very essential things to the growth and development of young animals. At eight months of age, or thereabouts, the skim milk is omitted and they are removed to the heifer barn, where they are fed principally on hay, corn stover, silage and roots, with enough of tho grain mixture to keep them growing. It is found that this method of handling produces in Jerseys size, constitution and capacity at the pail and churn.