Post by daisyacres on Oct 21, 2014 7:17:53 GMT -5
Hi all. I'm new here from NE Oklahoma. We have a menagerie of everything from dairy goats to poultry to horses. One week ago today we added two bottle bull calves. So far they are doing ok, they are active, suck the bottle down, look bright eyed but I don't want to get into trouble with them and lose them. So I have a few questions if you all don't mind!
We are feeding them an all milk non medicated replacer. I'm very careful with bottle temp and cleanliness. We started out giving them 1 QT 3 times a day for the first 3 days. They seemed to be doing well on that but my husband wanted to just feed 2 x a day so we split it into 1.5 qts and fed morning and evening on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday night we noticed they had poopy butts. So yesterday I cut them back to 1 pint morning and afternoon and 1 1/2 pints last night.
We are also offering some baby beef calf starter which they will suck off my hand. They took about a cup total of that yesterday.
Before you all get upset about the amounts I should say these are not great big Holstein calves. They are 1/2 jersey and 1/2 angus or Limousine. There were some purebred Holstein calves that were younger than ours there and they were a pretty good amount larger than these guys.
Anyway, of course I want to be feeding them the right amount but I'm concerned about feeding too much and about a correct weight for them. Is there a math formula or something for dairy cross breeds that I could use? I've read several places to give them 12% of their body weight in milk replacer-do you all agree with that?
Anyway, I would appreciate any help
We are feeding them an all milk non medicated replacer. I'm very careful with bottle temp and cleanliness. We started out giving them 1 QT 3 times a day for the first 3 days. They seemed to be doing well on that but my husband wanted to just feed 2 x a day so we split it into 1.5 qts and fed morning and evening on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday night we noticed they had poopy butts. So yesterday I cut them back to 1 pint morning and afternoon and 1 1/2 pints last night.
We are also offering some baby beef calf starter which they will suck off my hand. They took about a cup total of that yesterday.
Before you all get upset about the amounts I should say these are not great big Holstein calves. They are 1/2 jersey and 1/2 angus or Limousine. There were some purebred Holstein calves that were younger than ours there and they were a pretty good amount larger than these guys.
Anyway, of course I want to be feeding them the right amount but I'm concerned about feeding too much and about a correct weight for them. Is there a math formula or something for dairy cross breeds that I could use? I've read several places to give them 12% of their body weight in milk replacer-do you all agree with that?
Anyway, I would appreciate any help