Balanced Ration. Cattle like variety in their feed. Not all cattle have the same tastes and desires. When one cow refuses to eat her grain, it is well to try her on some other mixture. A good feeder usually has several grain feeds on hand at a time and is continually changing and trying out rations. By checking his results at the pail, he acquires knowledge that is more practical than any chemist can impart. We know that a cow’s food must contain the necessary elements needed for her bodily maintenance and the production of milk. We must supply the substances needed. Rules for figuring values of feeds and examples of balanced rations are given below, but we also let the cow in on the discussion. We should not follow rules so closely that we ignore her likes and dislikes or overlook the results that she puts in the milk pail and the pocket book. There is probably no living creature that has for its natural diet a balanced ration, unless it be a carnivorous animal that eats its prey whole—feathers and all.

A poorly balanced diet may be fed for several months before any results begin to show. Cattle do fairly well on the corn plant (mainly carbohydrates), and they also do well on pure alfalfa (a protein feed). They do better on a combination of the two, but the combination does not have to be in just the right proportion. In deciding what to feed a cow the good feeder uses his eyes more than his pencil. If the muscle and body of the animal needs building up, he uses protein feeds in large proportions. Cattle inclined to be too sleek and fat often milk better if fed more carbohydrates in proportion. But we should never pass up one or the other completely. Notice that I speak of only two substances in food—protein and carbohydrates. There are others, but we need not be concerned about them. All we want to know from the chemist is approximately the amount of these two elements the feed contains. Fat is considered the same as a carbohydrate but has more than two times the value of carbohydrates.

Dairy cows should be kept sleek and thrifty, but lean while they are producing milk. The dry cow should be allowed to get as fat as possible, for the fatter and more thrifty she is the more milk she will give, after freshening. To maintain the cow in the right condition, we consider both the kind and the amount of feed. Many times we decrease the grain ration to keep a cow from getting fat and going dry too soon. Too much grain fed is a great waste. The right amount to be fed can not be figured so much by the size of the cow as by what she does with it. The milk pail contains the answer to most feeding problems. Increase the feed slightly and if no more milk is produced, begin to decrease and watch what happens. We have to do this for each cow just as we have to adjust the carburetor on a Ford.

Elsewhere in this book, I discuss pastures and how to make the most of them. I get grass that is tall enough for the cattle to eat to the best advantage and I keep it from getting old and tough by using the system of divided pastures described there. But in doing this, the grass must be pastured off fairly close before turning the cattle into the next pasture. If care is not taken, the cattle are having alternately a feast and a famine by the change. To offset this, I usually feed as much good alfalfa as the cows will eat all of the time. It does not require much hay but it makes up for the variation in pasture. Even when on fine pasture, cows like a little hay and should have it. I usually pasture cows at night as well as during the day. By all means feed cows at night if they are required to stay in the lot.

Where the heaviest records are made in milk production, they are nearly all made at prohibitive costs so far as the value of the product is concerned. This is because too large a proportion of the feed consumed is high priced. We must take into consideration the price of grain, the price of rough feed, and the price of milk products, before we can determine the proportion of grain and other feed that should be given to the dairy cow.

We can make milk out of rough feed without any grain under the proper conditions. When grain is too much out of proportion in price, we can safely do without it, if our rough feed happens to be good pasture or good alfalfa hay and silage. If our roughage is too poor, it rarely pays to compel good dairy cows to live on it alone, for their future usefulness will be impaired by starvation. A drought in summer with the resulting short pasture often knocks down the milk flow for all of the next winter and makes all that year’s production more expensive. Starve a good cow and she soon becomes a poor one, for she must adjust herself to the new condition. The new condition she adopts is the same as that of the scrub. The scrub is a product of starvation. She has been bred to withstand hardships instead of using all efforts to produce milk. Never let a good cow go hungry for pasture or hay.

Water. A milk cow requires about twelve and one-half gallons of pure water per day. In summer it should be fresh and cool water. In winter it should be fairly warm. The water should be as accessible as possible at all times. Twice a day is not often enough for milk cows. Especially when cattle are on dry feed, the more water they can be induced to consume, the more butter fat and milk solids it will put into the pail. In the winter we usually water cows three times a day in the barn with water no colder than comes from the well, and slightly salt their feed so that they will drink water in abundance. I do not know just what effect stagnant, dirty water has on a milk cow, but do not think I would want to drink the milk that is made up largely of such water. Also if cattle wade in infected water and get their udders and teats in it, the milk will to a certain extent be infected as is the water.

Calf and Heifer Feeding. In raising calves by hand there is more danger of overfeeding than of underfeeding. There is also danger in feeding milk that is too cold. In feeding an average young calf we usually take about two quarts of the first milk that is drawn from the cow, which is low in butter fat, and feed the milk fresh and warm with the animal heat in it. After three weeks, skim milk may be substituted especially if it is warm and fresh. If the milk is artificially warmed it should be fed at a temperature of at least eighty degrees. Do not dilute milk with water. Let the calf have what water it wants separately. A calf should have milk until at least three months old but at the end of a week it will eat shelled corn and oats. These grains should be fed liberally to calves that do not have enough milk for a complete ration. After a calf is one month old it may be raised on milk made from dried buttermilk or condensed buttermilk or on skim milk of any kind, provided it is not fed too much at a time nor fed milk that is too cold. No changes such as from sweet milk to sour milk should be made suddenly. If feeding condensed buttermilk the milk after being diluted should be tested for solids with a lactometer. Some manufacturers of such products give directions for reducing it with water to such an extent that it would look like ordinary skim milk but have only half its value. This may make it appear that the feeder is getting a lot for his money, but he will not long be fooled by directions of that kind if he is watching the cost of his feed and the growth of his calves and knows what results he should expect for his money.

People sometimes tell of stunted calves that turned out to be good cows but I do not think that a calf can be stunted a minute without being affected. If a stunted calf makes a good cow, which seldom ever happens, certain it is that if the calf had been well nourished the cow would have been even greater. Animals do not grow all of their lives. They grow while they are young. Every minute of that youth period that we lose for growth is lost forever. Growth is the natural development of bone, muscle, nervous system, circulation, etc., that the animal needs for hard work when mature. Breeders of pure bred cattle, who expect to make records with their young stock, feed them grain every day. I do not think this is necessary or practical for the farmer to do, but certain it is, that no promising heifer should ever be allowed to get thin. She should have good pasture during all of the summer and should have plenty of well-cured feed, corn fodder or corn silage, and a fair amount of alfalfa every day during the winter.

Chemical Analysis. A chemical analysis of some of the most commonly used feeds for dairy cows follows:

Rations for the Dairy Cow. Haecker’s standard for the feeding of dairy cows is as follows:

DAILY ALLOWANCE

To illustrate the table there follows the allowance for a 1000 pound cow producing 25 pounds of 4% milk daily:

Below are given some balanced rations commonly fed to dairy cows:

At the Nebraska State Fair in 1920 there was in the Dairy building a large Holstein cow designated as the champion cow of Nebraska for 1919. She is owned by Chris Stryker of Red Cloud. I copied from the records the amount of feed she consumed in a year and the amount of her production. They are as follows:

It will be noticed that she consumed a little less than 18 pounds of grain per day on an average throughout the year, that the grain consisted of five varieties, and that the rough feed was of a high order, which makes it more expensive than most of us can afford to use as a regular feed. Beets are chemically about equal to corn silage, but in actual results in feeding they are considerably superior. I have not fed dried beet pulp, but I have fed it fresh and it is a very good milk producer. Cows milk down thin on it. If we would increase the figures on the dried beet pulp to what it would be if the pulp were fed fresh, it would bring the beet ration up to at least three times the amount of the silage ration.