Dr. Naylor's dehorning paste works very well. It sounds nasty and painful, but when I did a 15 day old Jersey calf this spring it didn't seem to bother him at all, he was more upset with being separated from momma for three hours while the paste did it's thing (obviously you don't want that stuff getting on her udder!). The paste works on calves up to 8 weeks old, but it's best done in the first two weeks. Or, I assume the dairy keeps some heifers, which get dehorned. Maybe you could bring him in on dehorning day.
No, he'll be just fine if you castrate him. It makes a huge difference in the temperament. I would also be careful though when you're raising him to teach him manners. For example, if when he's little he rubs on your leg, and you think it's just so cute (it is!), discipline him. Knee him or slap him and tell him no. Do it gently at first, but get more and more firm if he continues to do it. You want to teach him manners when he's small, before he can toss you in the air on a whim, LOL. Make sure to discipline him when he's little for anything he does that won't be cute when he's 700 pounds. Another thing is that calves have the natural instinct to bop the bottle, which by the time they get 150 pounds or so can really hurt if you're holding it! We bottle feed through a gate. When they bop, they hit their nose on the gate, which hurts, and so they soon learn not to bop. This may sound cruel, but it works very well. Not only can they easily bop the bottle out of your hand later, but you could get seriously hurt when the calf is bigger.
The milk from fresh cows would be great for him at any age. On "sick" milk, it depends. How is the cow sick? Was she given antibiotics for a bad foot or is her milk mastitic? The antibiotics do go in the milk, but if the milk is free and antibiotics don't bother you this could be a very good source of free milk, and certainly better for the calf than milk replacer. The antibiotics are likely killing some of the good things in the milk though, so every 3rd feeding or so during the first three months I'd give him some antibiotic-free milk (or better yet, some of the "fresh" colostrum-y milk), just so his gut flora can do well. After three months he's not near as fragile and would likely do fine on the antibiotic milk. With mastitic milk, it depends. If it looks normal and has fewer than 10 small chunks in the strainer per gallon, then that is just fine IMO (although my guess is that the dairy puts this milk in the tank). If it is watery with lots of chunks it's only good for hogs, IMO.
Is this a Holstein, Jersey, or Holstein/Jersey cross dairy? Holstein milk has a very low butterfat content. If this is Holstein milk, I would suggest letting the milk set for 24-48 hours in the fridge in one of those big plastic containers from Walmart with a spiggot on the bottom. If the milk is less than 20% cream, I'd drain off some of the skim milk until the milk is at least 20% cream, 18% anyway. Again, you'd probably only need to do this for the first three months or so, just to keep him from getting pot-bellied due to lack of protein. After that, you could just give him the regular milk (but more of it, because of the lesser cream content). If this is a Jersey dairy disregard this, Jerseys make very creamy milk, and he'll do great!
Also, Heather Smith Thomas highly recommends bottle-feeding over bucket-feeding calves. Because of the nursing action, the milk sidesteps the rumen, and so the calf is able to get a lot more of the nutrients. If he drinks it from a bucket it will go in the rumen and a lot of the nutrition will go straight through him, again making him pot-bellied. (Sorry, I'm sure by now you're sick of hearing of all the things that can cause him to get pot-bellied, LOL)
Donrae also has a good point about scheduling a date with the butcher well in advance. The butcher we use is frequently booked up solid as much as six months in advance for both hogs and steers.
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