Pet Calves

[HillLuing]

Never have any real success with our pet calves (Beef HHerd. Try twin on all that we can as any we keep on the bottle and offer a calve mixture to with water avaliable just never seem to do!

We have in the past kept them in the individual pens we calve in and unsure if maybe there just not doing in that environment but most of them go down hill after a week or so and either die or linger on just not doing!

What do most folk do with there pets? Is it better to make a pen with sheep gates in a nice airy area and hope they thrive better??

 

[JSmith]

How many cows you calving, an for what reason are they not on there cow?? It would be very rare for us to have a spare calf, either they rear the twins them self or they get put on a milky cow, or at worst sold! If I lost a healthy calf ide be very disappointed

 

[Anymulewilldo]

Too much draught, not enough colostrum, not enough powder in the calf milk, not enough calf milk, some form of nasty bug in your calving shed? The list of what it could be is large. But rearing calves shouldn’t be hard at all? We’ve reared loads of dairy crosses over the years and apart from viral pneumonia has no major issues. On the very odd occasion I get stuck with a suckler calf it tears just the same as the dairy calves and looks like any other suckler calf by 12 months.
how much, how often and which powder do you use?

 

[upnortheast]

Got a local dairy farmer you could chat to ? They rear all their calves & may have some tips.

Starting point is sufficient colostrum within 6 hours of birth. How to you deal with that

 

[Cowmansam]

I’d hazard a guess there not getting enough colostrum

 

[Cowmansam]

Start there then make sure all your bottles and stuff are clean your water supply is clean and your mixing the right amount for the calf beds clean and give the navels a good dip in iodine

 

[Cowmansam]

An afternoon with a dairy farmer would be helpful as up northeast said

 

[M-J-G]

We end up with the odd spare calf every few years and they don't get any fancy treatment, they usually stay in a calving pen and get colostrum from a cow that lives on the farm and goes onto replacer after 2 days and get ad-lib concentrate feeding, this year's calf got lamb creep as it was what we had.

Once they are weaned they just get flung outside with a batch of cows and calves with a creep feeder.

Apart from being a big more gutty than the rest and a bit less glossy than the twins that they run with they generally do fine.

 

[czechmate]

We have about one every other year. I find they cost about €500 in milk powder

 

[czechmate]

We had twins last week, limousines are not exactly the most milky and I did notice the other evening that one of the twins was going to all the other cows to see if he could pick up a bit of spare. Most don’t let them on but you get the odd kind one

 

[Cowmansam]

We have about one every other year. I find they cost about €500 in milk powder

How long you have them on powder for

 

[czechmate]

How long you have them on powder for

9 months like with their mums I suppose

 

[M-J-G]

9 months is a long time!
I thought I was bad giving them 3 bags

 

[Muck Spreader]

9 months like with their mums I suppose

Three or four months is plenty. Get then on concentrates asap.

 

[Cowmansam]

9 months like with their mums I suppose

Your mad 9 weeks be fine

 

[czechmate]

Your mad 9 weeks be fine

We are a suckler and cereal farm, not dairy, so then feed them on what?

 

[Cowmansam]

Grass same as I do

 

[Cowmansam]

1/2 kg of pellet a day for a month or so while out at grass then they should be grand quicker you get the rumen going the better for them

 

[czechmate]

Grass same as I do

with last years, we then had a cow loose her calf and managed to get her to feed him. Put them out and she stopped feeding him. He was about 5 months and seemed to manage so we left him. A right runty thing in the fattening pen at the moment and my cereal is worth a fortune.

 

[Cowmansam]

That’s why getting them onto grass earlier is key