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Show ! Washington County Dairymen Reported Showing Interest in Raising Good Calves l . Wf . i f- ks , ; ) i Washington County dairymen are more interested in raising good calves than they have been in years, according to a number of ! them who were interviewed by I this reporter recently. They want particularly good heifers to turn into future milk cows, because the dairy business seems likely to be on the up-grade for a number of years to come. This new interest in good calves has raised a question on many farms hereabouts. Dairymen want to ship all the milk they can, yet don't want to hold back the growth of young heifer calves. This reporter finds that many dairymen around here are solving the problem of raising good calves with a small amount of milk by feeding a dry calf starter. This is not the messy meal which farmers farm-ers used to cuss a few years ago as they mixed it into gruels for feeding. This is a dry feed containing con-taining little pellets rnixed with crushed oats and other bulky feeds which calves seem to relish right from the trough as shown in this picture. The best thing about this type of feed, according to local dairymen dairy-men is that it is much cheaper and easier to feed than the milk it replaces. A bag of one brand of this feed, known as Purina Calf Startena, will replace 4 cans or approximately 350 pounds of milk, according to local dairymen who are using it. With milk at $2.00 cwt. they can ship 4 cans of milk to market and get about $7.00 for it. This leaves them about $3.30 to $2.70 in their pocket a nice reward for feeding dry feed instead of good milk which is so much in demand right now for human consumption. Even with milk at $1.10 cwt., it still costs less to feed the dry starter, according to Ralph West-over, West-over, local feed dealer who supplies several local dairymen with this type of feed. Naturally, a good dairyman's first question is whether this plan of feeding will raise as good a calf as can be done with whole milk. Your reported finds that that question can be answered with a big "Yes" by several dairymen in this locality who have been feeding feed-ing dry feed. Mr. Westover says that many of his customers raise even bigger and better calves by this method than they used to do with whole milk, supplemented with a little grain or bran after the calf was around 3 months old. He says that they put the dry feed in front of the calves when just 4 days old, and feed a small amount of whole milk along with it for one month. After that the calves have learned to eat and digest the dry feed and milk is taken away entirely. He says that calves look a little thinner right after the milk is cut off but that they soon pick up and actually actu-ally grow more stretch and frame than milk-fed calves by the time they are four months old. When 4 months old ,the calves are put on a lower cost growing grain ration. |