Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1883-08-18
Feeding Young Dairy Agimals.

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treatment from their birth in order to
their best development and widest use
fitness. Many an enthusiastic breeder
has learned tohis dismay that the young
animal in which his highest hopes were
centered, whose breeding he has conned
over with exceeding delight, has proven
but an Indifferent producer at the pail
or churn; but unfortunately he has
not always been able to trace the de-
struction of his hopes to the true source,
which he might have found in his own
injudicious efforts to force her develop
ment. Every breeder does not know,
though great many have learned by
experience, that "best, but most expen-
sive of all schools" that it is a very
easy, and withal very natural thing,
to counteract by injudicious feeding in
single generation the best effects Of
long and careful breeding. Milk pro-
duction is an artificial or cultivated
habit, and there is constant tendency
in all well bred animals to reversion
toward their original types, or what is
technically called atavism.
1t is only by constant endeavor in
that direction that the milk producing
habit is maintained against this ten
dency. But when in addition to this
natural and ever present tendency the
animal is put upon course of feeding
calculated to develop some other or any
other faculty or property the drifting
away from the milking habit is greatly
accelerated.
In the matter of feeding stock for
whatever purpose, radical changes
have taken place within a very few
years, and not few erroneous notions
on the subject have seized with firm
hold upon the popular mind. Corn i;
king and high feeding the rage among
stock men of every sort. The dairy
man who should venture to raise hi:
calves on skim milk and hay until they
are four months old, and then turr
them away to grass with never a lick
of grain, would be in fear of visi
and reprimand from the officers of the
nearest humane society, though many
fine dairy COWS have been reared thai
way in the past. A pot-belly is the
great bugbear of fashionable breeders
and they have holy horror of breed
ing or feeding as their fathers did,
Horse men and cattle men everywhere,
especially the leader of the fashions,
feed heavily of concentrated foods.
with especial reference to shrinking the
pdunch, and dairymen unmindful Of
the fact that such a course of feeding
is Numerically opposed to their inter
ests fall into line and thoughtlessly
practice it upon their stock, young and
old alike. But while most observing
practical dairymen understand that g
capacious paunch with large power Of
digestion and assimilation is indispensa
bic in the dairy COW, they do not real
ize that these things depend almost
wholly upon their own skill and care
in developing them, and that to be eff
fective it must begin with the calf Ii
several cases fashiOnably bred calves
have rebelled against their fashionable
feeding, having evidently been cloyeC
and as last resort have been turned
out to shirk for themselves in some pas
ture or field. Almost without excep
ton such calves have developed CRANE
milking qualities, but of course unde
limitations of breed and other influences
though they are of the understood. Q
course no humane dairyman woul,
Z think Of turning young calves out t
/ grass without suitable feed and plent
! Of it, but he should with equal car
avoid the every extreme of quality an
leave the feeding of concentrated foo
to the breeders Of beef animals. TIL
coarsest and lightest food calves ca
have, if nutritious and digestable,
the best. The larger the paunch tn
: better. Growing, and not tattenn
food is the best for all young dairy cal
tie. The young animal should alway
be kept growing, but it should neye
he fattened No COW was ever so 200