The Iowa plain dealer. [volume] (New Oregon, Howard County, Iowa) 1867-1895, 1890-05-01
HINTS ON FEEDING.


ductiveness OF Dairy Animsls.
Farmers should use the scales more
than they do and note the gain of their
young stock from time to time. Most
farmers are convenient enough to stock
scales to weigh their growing stock oc-
casionally. and thus not only learn much
themselves, but If the results were pub.
lished make them instructive to others.
am now raising grade Norman colt
that was foaled in August, 1888. When
weaned, at four months old, it weighed
$50 pounds. then fed it for 100 days
and found it weighed 400 pounds. II
ran on blue grass pasture until No
vember, when found that it had gained,
since March. 800 pounds, and its weight
was $50 pounds. A breeder Of Norman
horses, who looked Ut him recently,
says he will make . horse that will
weigh over 1000 pounds when grown.
/ do not foed this colt much corn, but in
very cold weather he gets an ear or two
day. l feed bran, oats and carrots,
with bright corn fodder. in fact. the
kind Of food that develop his frame
rather than makes him fat. ! consider
this very important with all young ami.
mails, but especially SO with colt that
is raised for muscle and not for meat.
Some years ago, before I had studied
this question of foods. ! became the
owner Of fine thoroughbred short-horn
calf. 1t was dropped in October, and
determined to show the neighbors what
feed would do. taught the calf to eat
shelled corn before it was month old,
and by the time it was three months old
it would eat three large ears three
times day. In April, when it was six
months old, it weighed 400 pounds, and
was fat enough for the butcher. In that
month turned it on good bluegrass
pasture and expected great gain, but
1t did not thrive, and six months later
found that IL had gained but ITS pounds.
With warm stable and the best Of care
II gained but sixty-fve pounds during
the next six months and weighed only
$40 pounds at eighteen months OF age.
Although 1t did better the next summer
1t was never thrifty, and when thirty
months old weighed but 1000 pounds.
A few years ago had four nice, young
cattle, coming ? years old, which ]
weighed in The fall and wintered two OF
Of them in warm stable. and the other
two in the barnyard, with no shelter but
. straw stack. The cattle in the stable
gained 100 pounds each. while those
wintered in tho barnyard weighed just
the same in the spring that they did the
previous autumn. although they were
fed exactly alike. These cattle were
fed grain twice day al winter, and ~
there we're no stronger cattle to drive
them away they could get under the
edge Of the stack 50 IS to keep compare.
lively comfortable. The thousands OF
cattle wintered without even straw
stack to shelter them, and that sleep
and eat on the frozen ground, exposed
to rain and snow, usually show loss Of
many pounds instead of any gain. !
wish to add that IL is some years since
would sooner give it away than GO 20
again.
1t seems to me that there is NO one
thing that will do farmers SO much good
% to give them . thorough knowledge
Of the effects Of different foods ON
animals. Fortunately the agricultural
press and the institutes are doing much
to educate them in this line. But with
all that has been taught during the last
ten years there are still thousands of
farmers who think bran mighty poor
feed" and whose calves, colts and pigs
get no other grain than corn from one
ysar's end to another. When. as is often
the case, the cholera sweeps away .
herd of corn-raised hogs the owner is
apt to attribute it to bad luck. 1t is the
worst kind OF bad luck to be ignorant,
and it is bad luck to be careless and in
different. l do not follow the moon
theory in farming, but know it is bad
luck for the moon to ''shine through the
cracks of rail fence on cattle from No
vember to March," and since I come to
think about it, we farmers have -
powerful sight" of bad luck that we
might escape by being more intelligent
and painstaking. We ought to do every
thing that we do rs we'll as we know
how or can learn how, and when we do
this our bad luck will begin to dis
appear. +. Brown, in Phila.
delphia Press.