rs 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.

When milk has been the chief food, and the weaning is sudden, usually
growth will be more or less arrested. When sustained largely on other
foods, the change may be made without any check to the growth, even in
the case of calves that suck their dams. When hand raised, the quantity
of milk is gradually reduced until none is given. In the case of sucking
calves they should be allowed to take milk once a day for a time before
being shut entirely away from the dams. The supplementary food should be
strengthened as the milk is withheld.

Calves should have constant access to good water, even during the milk
period, and also to salt.

Where many are fed simultaneously, the milk should be given in pails
kept scrupulously clean. The pails should be set in a manger, but not
until the calves have been secured by the neck in suitable stanchions.
As soon as they have taken the milk, a little meal should be thrown into
each pail. Eating the dry meal takes away the desire to suck one
another.

Calves of the dairy, dual purpose, and beef breeds may be reared by hand
along the same lines, but with the following points of difference:

(1) The dual types want to carry more flesh than the dairy types, and
the beef types more than either.

(2) To secure this end, more and richer milk must be given to calves of
the beef type, especially during the first weeks of growth. Forcing
calves of the beef type would be against the highest development
attainable. Until the milking period is reached, the food and gener