Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/565

 calf with extremely nourishing and also laxative properties, and it is of practically no value for any other purpose. Normal cows’ milk has an albuminoid ratio slightly narrower than 1: 4—colostrum 1: .71. [The ratio is arrived at by adding to the percentage of milk-sugar, possessing about the food equivalent of starch, the fat multiplied by 2.268, and dividing by the total albuminoids—all digestible.]

Common nutrient ratios for older animals are stated in the following table of food standards by Dr Emil Wolff:—

Digestible albuminoid nitrogen is the scarcest and consequently the costhest ingredient in food-stuffs, but, since the introduction of vegetable proteid made by Mitchell’s process from the castor bean, an easy and inexpensive means of balancing cattle food ratios is available. By this means the manurial value of the excrement is increased. The calculations necessary in arriving at a ratio are simplified by the employment of Jeffers’s calculator (Plainsboro, N.J.).

There are three common methods of rearing calves, (1) The calf sucks its mother or foster-mother. This is the natural method and the best for the show-yard and for early fattening purposes; but it is the most expensive, and the calves, if not handled, grow up wild and dangerous. Store stock may be also raised by putting two calves to one cow and weaning at three months old; a second pair in turn yielding place to a single calf. (2) Full milk from the cow at about 90° F. is given alone until the latter part of the milk period; then the calf is trained to eat supplementary foods to preserve the calf-fat after weaning. A large calf at first receives daily three quarts of milk at three meals. The amount is increased to 2 gallons by the end of the fourth week, and to 2 gallons at 3 months, when gradual weaning begins. Linseed cake meal is specially suitable for such calves. (3) The calf receives full milk from the mother for one to two weeks, or better, for three to four weeks; then it is slowly transferred to fortified separated milk or milk substitutes. Cod-liver oil, 2 oz. daily, is a good substitute for butter fat. In America cotton-seed oil, oz. to the quart of milk, or an equivalent of oleomargarine heated to 110° F. and churned with separated milk, has produced a live-weight-increase of 2 ℔ daily. Linseed simmered to a jelly and added to separated milk gives good results. Moderate amounts are easily digested. Oatmeal or maize meal containing 10% of linseed meal does well, later, at less cost. Milk substitutes and calf meals require close attention in preparation, and would not fetch the prices they do if feeders possessed the technical knowledge necessary to select and mix common foods. Ground cake or linseed meal is, after a time, better given dry than cooked, being then better masticated and not so liable to produce indigestion.

Grass or fine hay in racks is provided when the calf can chew the cud. As cattle get older, live-weight-increase grows less. Smithfield weights show that a good bullock up to a year old will increase 2 ℔ daily, a two-year-old 1 ℔, and a three-year-old a little over 1 ℔.

Cattle feeding on a farm consume crude produce that is inconvenient to market, and make farmyard manure; but there is frequently no profit left. To secure the balance on the right side the inlaid price per live cwt. requires to be 5s. less than the sale price—say 32s. per cwt. for lean cattle, and 37s. per cwt. for the animal when sold fat and capable of producing 60% of dressed beef. The ordinary animal yields only about 57%. A well-bred fattening bullock begins with 2 ℔ of cake and meal per day, increasing to 8 ℔; at the end of five months (6 ℔ on an average), and receives cwt. of roots and 12 ℔; of straw; at an average cost of about 4s. 3d. per imperial stone or 50s. per cwt. of dressed carcase. Heifers feed faster than bullocks, and age tells on the rate at which an animal will mature: a three-year-old will develop into prime beef more quickly and easily than a two-year-old. It is difficult to produce “baby beef” at a profit, and it can only be done with picked animals of the best flesh-producing breeds, which cannot be bought at a price per cwt. below the finished sale price, for animals producing baby beef must from start to finish (under two years old) be at all times fit to go to the fat market. It is true that a very young animal can give a better account of food than an older one, but this advantage is counterbalanced by the tendency to grow rather than to fatten. (See also .)

In cold and stormy districts cattle thrive best in covered courts, but in a mild climate they do equally well in open yards with shelter-sheds. The more air they get the less liable they are to tuberculosis—example Lincolnshire and the drier south-eastern counties. The ideal method of house-feeding cattle is singly in boxes 10 ft. square, where they are undisturbed, and where the best manure is made because it is not washed by rain.

On the finest British grazing lands two lots of cattle are fed in one season. The first is finished early in July, having, without artificial feeding, laid on eight to nine stones of beef. The second lot requires three or four pounds of undecorticated cotton cake each towards the end of September and in October when grass begins to fail.

 CATULLUS, GAIUS VALERIUS (?84–54 ), the greatest lyric poet of Rome. As regards his names and the dates of his birth and death, the most important external witness is that of Jerome, in the continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, under the year 87, “Gaius Valerius Catullus, scriptor lyricus Veronae nascitur,” and under 57 , “Catullus xxx. aetatis anno Romae moritur.” There is no controversy as to the gentile name, Valerius. Suetonius, in his Life of Julius Caesar (ch. 73), mentions the poet by the names “Valerium Catullum.” Other persons who had the cognomen Catullus belonged to the Valerian gens, e.g. M. Valerius Catullus Messalinus, a delator in the reign of Domitian, mentioned in the fourth satire of Juvenal (l. 113):—

“Et cum mortifero prudens Veiento Catullo.”

Inscriptions show, further, that Valerius was a common name in the native province of Catullus, and belonged to other inhabitants of Verona besides the poet and his family (Schwabe, Quaestiones Catullianae, p. 27). Scholars have been divided in opinion as to whether his praenomen was Gaius or Quintus, and in the best MSS. the volume is called simply Catulli Veronensis liber. For Gaius we have the undoubted testimony, not only of Jerome, which rests on the much earlier authority of Suetonius, but also that of Apuleius. In support of Quintus a passage was quoted from the Natural History of Pliny (xxxvii. 6, 81). But the praenomen Q. is omitted in the best MSS., and in other passages of the same author the poet is spoken of as “Catullus Veronensis.” The mistake may have arisen from confusion with Q. Catulus, the colleague of Marius in the Cimbric War, himself also the author of lyrical poems. Allusions in the poems show that the date of his death given by Jerome (57 ) is wrong, and that Catullus survived the second consulship of Pompey (55 ) (cf. lv. 6, cxiii. 2), and was present in August of the