Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1890 — THE DAIRY. [ARTICLE]

THE DAIRY.

Feeding Calvo* Sklm-Mllk. A ycry successful feeder hi Canada uses the following method in raising calves on skim-milk: The calves arc fed by hand all the new milk they will take three times a day, until about a week old. Then skim-milk is added; only a little at first, but th« quantity of skim-milk is so increased and that of the new milk so reduced, that in two weeks from the commencement of this change, skim-milk only will be fed. The skim-milk is fed only when it is sweet, as when sour it produces scours and Injures digestion in other ways. The skim-milk is fed at the temperature of milk just from the cow. In heating, a portion of the milk is put on the stove in a pan or pail, and heated gradually till quite warm. It is then poured into the portions respectively set apart for each calf. The calves got the milk three times a day for, say a month from the beginning of the. change to skim-milk, but a less quantity is given at noon, and if fed regularly they may get all the skim-milk they will take without Injury to them. When the change is being made from new inilk to skim-milk, flax seed is added to the milk. It is prepared as follows: For two calves, take half a teacupful of flax at night, and pour on two quarts of boiling water, allowing it to steep till morning; it is then warmed and added to the milk; thdquantlty of flax may be gradually but slowly increased until threefourths of a teseupful of flax seed, steeped in a proportionate increase of hot water, is given to each animal. The flax for the night meal is put to steep in the same way in the morning. Milk is fed until the calves are seven or eight months old. They should have access to all the clean water they will drink at all times. They get all the meal they will eat up clean twice a day. The mixture consists of one-fourth ground peas, one-fourth ground oats, 4k:id one-half wheat bran; this is mixed with good hay run througli a cutting box. The proportion of the hay to the meal is increased as the calves get older. Where meal of this kind is not to bo had, give your calves oats, which you may feed whole, and you need not mix them with cut hay. Oat sheaves are sometimes cut in the chaffer and the meal mixture added, but not so much of it in quantity as when the cut oat sheaves are not fed. Rutter Flavors. The way to secure good flavored butter is to feed the cows with good flavored food. The delicious aroma and palatable flavors of the butter come from the oils of the food. These oils are unchanged by digestion. Hence the butter is • characterized by the food consumed by the cow. The whilom popularity of June and September butter had something substantial behind it. It was made from the sweet grasses of June and the fresh aftermath of the second growth, and under the favoring temperature peculiar to the early and late summer alike. Edward Burnett, the noted dairyman of Deerfoot Farm, tells of deciding a sharp competition for the honors at a fair, where he afterward learned the young dairyman who won the prize picked bright clover heads each day for his pet Jersey that was giving him the milk. These delicious flavoring oils do not come from bog hay, where they never exist, nor from improper foods whose flavors are not of a standard order. Dairyman seeking a product of high quality will' do well to think of these things when providing fodders for cows in milk.— Maine Farmer.