B. Vitamins Required for Growth

Suckling animals will receive plenty of vitamin A in the milk if their dams are fed suitable rations. When they are weaned, care must be taken that sufficient of this vitamin is furnished by well-cured hay, good pasture or other green feed or by yellow corn.

In the case of calves that have been changed from whole milk to skim-milk or milk substitutes at an early age it is especially important to furnish them with choice, green-coloured hay as soon as they will eat it to provide both vitamin A and vitamin D. Young stock on pasture will not suffer from lack of vitamin D, because of the effect of the ultra-violet rays in sunlight.

Under winter conditions, however, young pigs are often severely crippled or even paralyzed by rickets caused by a lack of this vitamin. Also calves often suffer from rickets and they are stunted and badly deformed as a result. These conditions can usually be entirely prevented by the use of well-cured legume hay. Lambs rarely have rickets, probably because they eat much hay, and all good shepherds make a special effort to supply them with hay of good quality.

With the exception of poultry, which need particularly liberal amounts of riboflavin, there is generally no lack of the other vitamins in the rations that are commonly fed to young stock.