Lots of dairy cow questions *Update*

[arabianequine]

One 2 quart bottle/twice a day. I think thats what cowgirl71 meant but sounded like 2 bottles in the am and pm so wanted to make sure. We start giving sweet grain at 3 days old all they want. Hay at about a 2-4 weeks old at a month old they really are eating the hay well. I just give a handful each starting at 2 weeks and they do peck at it. Sooner the better....the fiber will help firm up their poop. Then less milk they need too....but we usually give milk for 75 days min.

I do love the pics too...sunset is beautiful. The cow will enjoy the area.

 

[Cowgirl71]

We raise beef calves on the milk, so their final appearance is very important to us. We've had many bottle calves, and we've figured out how to keep them from getting the dreaded potbelly. Potbellied calves don't do well at all at the sale barn.

We give them all the milk they want three times a day, for the first 30 days. Then all the milk they want twice a day for the next 30 days. Once they hit the two month old point, we give them grain and hay, and cut down to a gallon of milk twice a day per calf. We continue this until they're six months old. Then we wean them and sell the boys and keep most of the girls for replacements. At six months, the boys weigh about 500 pounds, and the girls about 450. We do have extra milk. If it weren't for that, it wouldn't be cost efficient to do this. But it's either this or literally pouring the milk on the ground. We're attached to the cows, and we do use a fair amount of their milk, but we like getting the extra income by raising the calves to sell. We also like getting the very docile replacement heifers.

 

[Katy]

I've raised a lot of bucket calves over the years and giving them too much milk is a quick way to give them the scours.

 

[arabianequine]

Quote:
It is not near as bad with cow milk or goat milk.

Milk re-placer is a whole different story....I've done that too.

Sure give them all the milk they want if coming off a heifer and not milk re-placer. They can get grain scours too so be careful.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
It is not near as bad with cow milk or goat milk.

Milk re-placer is a whole different story....I've done that too.

Sure give them all the milk they want if coming off a heifer and not milk re-placer. They can get grain scours too so be careful.

That is true that milk replacer is worse than milk from the cow, but I think it also has to do with giving large amounts at only two or three times a day as opposed to when they're on the cow 24/7 and nurse many times during the day in much smaller quantities.

 

[Hound]

The calf's purpose will be stand-in cow milker

I'll milk her once a day for a couple of months, then he may be weaned and have a younger replacement.

BTW Is it tomorrow yet?

 

[Cowgirl71]

It's tomorrow, LOL!

One thing I forgot to mention is that if you leave a calf on a milk cow 24/7, he'll figure out pretty quickly when milking time is and gorge himself right before then, leaving you with very little milk.

Before we got the milk cows, we would bottle feed the calves with milk re-placer and they would get scours regularly. Now, they rarely get it. They usually get it once when they're young and we give them a bolus and they're fine within a day.

And we've found too that the grain can give them scours if given to them to young. We wait until they're at least two months old.

Katy, you may know of this, but if one of the beef calves on pasture nursing momma get's scours, our favorite treatment is to give the momma mineral. We make her a pan of grain, with two handfuls of cattle mineral and some maple or corn syrup drizzled over top to make the mineral stick to the grain and make the dish tasty, LOL.

It works REALLY well! Just thought I'd share this to a fellow cattle farmer.

It treats most cases especially if caught early, and if it doesn't we give the calf a bolus. We try to raise all-natural beef, and found this to be a good treatment.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Our cow raised calves don't get scours often unless we have a prolonged wet stretch of weather with lots of mud....and then only if they're still at home in the lot and not out in the pasture. We've never had a case of scours when they're on pasture that required treatment. Our cows have access to mineral 24/7/365.

 

[Cowgirl71]

Quote:
We give our cows free choice loose salt/mineral mix 24/7/365 too. If we do mineral by itself they barely touch it. We do get wet weather during calving season in our area and a few of the calves get scours. We have the cows calving when they are still eating at the hay feeders and so it's mucky no matter what we do. If we calve later in the year, the heat's harder on the cows and there's flies.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
We give our cows free choice loose salt/mineral mix 24/7/365 too. If we do mineral by itself they barely touch it. We do get wet weather during calving season in our area and a few of the calves get scours. We have the cows calving when they are still eating at the hay feeders and so it's mucky no matter what we do. If we calve later in the year, the heat's harder on the cows and there's flies.

We feed salt block and mineral seperate. We've never had any trouble getting them to eat the mineral.