The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1900-07-17
DAIRY AND POULTRY.
INTERESTING CHAPTERS FOR
OUR RURAL READERS.
How Successful Farmers Operate This
Department of the Farm-A Few
Hints as to the Care of Live Stock
and Poultry.
Feeding Dairy Calves.

There is a discussion going on In
some of our esteemed contemporaries
regarding the feeding of young dairy
calves, and it is rather amusing to note
some of the extravagant statements
made by those who argue that a calf
can be more successfully raised with
out milk than it can on the good old
plan provided by the Creator. If, for
instance, we are to believ, these en-
thusiasts, the feeding of milk is liable
to teach the calf the bad habit of lay
ing on fat instead of flesh and muscle,
and the growing of bone. Milk, then,
we must conclude, is fat-producing
food not fit for young growing calves,
a fallacy that requires no refuting
argument.
They proceed to prescribe manner
of feeding which, according to these
savants who can improve upon ma
lures methods, is better than milk for
the calf, in that it does not produce fat,
causes "pot-bellies," which say they
are a great desideratum for modern
dairy calves, and tends to the growth
of great coats of hair in winter to take
the place of fat which they so much
fear. Having thus provided what they
consider a perfect ration, and it con-
sists OF flour, flax-seed jelly, hay tea,
etc., they do not tell us what is the OBJ
lection to sweet skim milk, nor figure
the cost of their ration to show wherein
1t Is more economical than a ration of
dry corn meal and skim milk which
has been found a perfectly satisfactory
ration and cheaper than one contain
ing oil meal in any form, and it should
be remembered that of all it's forms
Jelly" is the most troublesome to pre-
pare.
The fact of the matter is that in the
West at least the proposed ration
would cost about as much as milk at
the prices it has been bringing when
shipped to the factory or made into
butter or cheese. In the East, where
the price of milk is higher than in the
West, there may be reason for depriy-
ing the young calves of it even during
the first few days of their lives. We
would prefer, however, to feed the calf
sweet milk for ten days or so and then
utilize the sweet skim milk that can so
easily and cheaply build up, by the
addition of corn meal fed dry, to per-
fectly take the place of the whole milk
which can be more proftably sold.
The Farmers Review is heartily in
favor of feeding growing dairy calves
upon a highly heterogeneous ration, but
it does not believe that milk is apt to
spoil a heifer as prospective mixer,
for mothers milk is the best-balanced
ration that can possibly be formed for
growing young animals, and it is abb
solute bosh to say that it lessons the
chances of a dairy-bred heifer becom-
ing a profitable milking cow. Keep
the calf growing naturally and it will
not be stunted by the laying on of fat,
nor is it necessary to produce pot
belly" which merely indicates an un-
healthy state of the digestive apparatus
and is far more likely to stunt and in
jure the calf than a ration containing a
certain proportion of fat, without
which no ration for any known pur-
pose would be complete.