Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and PoultryPratt Food Company
Science
Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry
Pratt Food Company
Livestock; Poultry
As soon as the calves will eat meal it should be given to them. No meal
is more suitable at the first than ground oats and wheat bran. A little
later whole oats will answer quite well. To calves grown for dairy uses
they may form the sole grain food. If the calves are to be grown for
beef, some more fattening food, as ground corn, or ground barley, should
be added to the meal. For such calves, equal parts of bran, oats whole
or ground, and ground corn, barley, rye, or speltz are excellent. Until
three months old they may be allowed to take all the grain that they
will eat. Later it may be necessary to restrict the quantity fed. Calves
for the dairy must be kept in a good growing condition, but without an
excess of fat. The meal should be kept in a box at all times accessible
to the calves and should be frequently renewed. Grain feeding may cease
when the calves are put upon pasture.
As soon as the calves will eat fodder it should be given to them. Fodder
gives the necessary distention to the digestive organs, which makes the
animals capable of taking a sufficient quantity of food to result in
high production. Alfalfa, clover-hay, and pea and oat hay are excellent,
provided they are of fine growth and cut before they are too advanced in
growth. If field roots can be added to the fodder the result in
development and good digestion will be excellent. Any kind of field
roots are good, but mangels, sugar beets, and rutabagas are the most
suitable because of their good keeping qualities. They should be fed
sliced, preferably with a root slicer, and the calves may be given all
that they will eat without harm resulting.
The duration of the milk period more commonly covers three to four
months with calves that are hand fed, but it may be extended
indefinitely providing skim-milk may be spared for such a use. Such
feeding is costly. Calves reared on their dams are seldom allowed milk
for more than six or seven months, save when they are reared for show
purposes.
(1) The amount should be determined by the observed capacity of the calf
to take milk and by the relative cost of the skim-milk and the adjuncts
fed along with it.
(2) During the first weeks until it begins to eat other food freely, it
should be given all the milk that it will take without disturbing the
digestion.
(3) Usually it would be safe to begin with six pounds of milk per day,
giving eight pounds at the end of the first week, and to add one pound
each week subsequently until the age of 10 to 12 weeks. Any excess of
milk given at one time usually disturbs the digestion and is followed by
too lax a condition of the bowels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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