Recent content by Brett Enright

Well actually I have pretty much unlimited access to malt combings and malted barley (I know too much can kill) but after weaning they may be solely on malt combings anyway. I don't know where to get a grain mix, I did buy chook layer ration with all sorts of seeds in it. I just thought that...

Thankyou la4angus. Now I've got the go-ahead I just need to find the place to buy it. Brett.

Hi. I have chickens that can in no way at the present time be restrained from eating any dry food that is left out for calves. Because calf rearer pellets contain medication, chooks cannot eat this (not allowed in their eggs) so I have to only allow access for calves to this at night. Obviously...

Yep chooks are chickens in Australia:) Brett.

thankyou for your responses. I just wondered whether feeding them for an extra 2 weeks (extra cost also) would be worth it, trying to catch up for possible previous lost growth, - will i gain in the long run or is that feed wasted. To tell the truth, because I have chooks my calves are eating...

My dad (steveaust) has been advised by a dairy farmer to wean his angusXfreisan calves at 10 weeks. I seem to think that 8 weeks is enough, as the milk powder bag only goes up to 8 weeks anyway & 10 weeks sounds excessive. My calves didn't have the best start, the drinking system was difficult...

I have 2 6 week old calves on 1 acre of very grassy paddock. Lately they have not been drinking much milk and eating nil pellets. I cannot restrict the grass, but WILL next time, but to ensure more milk and possible pellets are consumer, can I make water ONLY available at night (except on warm...

OK texan thanks. My dad suggested I use iodine to prevent infection - I don't have a clue what I'm doing :( He said that his premixed solution was a very low strength, perhaps below 5%, so we wanted to find out how much to water down the 10% solution that we have. The label has no instructions...

OK when my dad put ear tags in the calves ears, one of them bled. He had a small amount of weak iodine solution left over, but doesn't know at what strength it was. I have a bottle of 'Strong Iodine Solution' 'Animal Health Care Products'. The strength is 100g/litre or 10%. Now how much do I...

Vicki he means a pour on drench, not one that you put in their mouth. This is one for worms etc but your pour it on their back. It is made to be a drench here in Australia. He just needs to know how often to drench them because the bottle doesn't say. :D Brett.

Phew. Well no matter what I do, I can't keep the chooks out of the medicated calf feed. Then I find out that I can't put chook pellets at the calf shed so the chooks eat them instead because they are restricted animal material. So, its either get rid of calves, or build a big, expensive fence...

No Jay, sorry the reason I will not have my chooks (yes, thats Aussie for Chicken LOL) eating calf pellets is because I sell the eggs, and calf pellets are medicated: contain some sort of antibiotic, that although used to treat chooks, must NOT be found in the eggs. I cannot afford to have...

Well you may have all read about my chooks eating medicated calf pellets - no matter what I did I couldn't stop them. So, now I've got a supply of chook pellets, low to the ground, right next to the hanging bucket containing calf pellets. Therefore, the chooks dn't need to fly up into the...

Now that you mention it, they are drinking quite a lot of water, I can't provide measurements, but perhaps they are drinking as a whole as much milk as thry should drink a day. I'm thinking that in winter here, they should be drinking next to NO water. Sorry I can't restrict water, its in a big...

I'm steveaust's son. Actually the older calf drinking barely any milk is 45 days old, over 6 weeks. All of a sudden the other day the calves cut down the amount of milk they drink by half. It funny that the older the calf, the less milk they are now drinking. Tonight the last calf to stop...