4h bucket calves

[Daisy452]

Glad to get replies. I didn't type it right. I am the mother . The 4-H program is called "bucket calf" project but you can feed them with a bottle if you choose. You don't get the calf until may-just trying to see if this is a good choice to start with to introduce the kids to showing. How often do you have to feed them? They would be about 10 days old.

Thats a very good age to get a calf. A good choice to introduce kids to, but first time projects are the hardest for everyone. First starting out I would on get one per kid.

 

[Daisy452]

A ten day old calf is going to be spunky. If he has been on momma for ten days, be prepared for a battle.

Actually most dairies seperate the calves from the cows the first day of birth and bottle fed them from then on, starting with the first bottle as colstrum. They do this because they dont want the calf damaging the utter of the cow. The calves are kept in a small individual "calf dome". They are feed 2-3 times a day by a bottle.

 

[ctlbaron]

Bottle calf, bucket calf, no difference. They all get their food somewhere other than mama. Sanitization isn't required, just wash everything up good after feeding and rinse well before mixing milk at the next feeding. I don't know of one cow in the pasture that sanitizes her nipples before feeding her calf. If you've got a sick calf to begin with no ammount of cleaning will keep him alive. Keep the pen clean and dry and a good calf will do fine.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Forget it trying to get any good info from here with these ego maniacs on board here.........

I am truly sorry you feel that way. Hopefully, if someone disagrees with the perspective we use, they will speak up. This enables the person requesting information to receive different views from all angles and all sides.

This forum is world wide. Right here in the states we have various climates and various terrains. As such, there are going to be differences and differing opinions.

 

[hraz]

22lbs a day dry weight? at $45+ per 50lb bag of milk replacer???

Yes. It was a huge amount. But, the child went to the fair, made weight, showed and sold at auction. She learned that hard work and persistance will get you through what appeared to be hopeless. AND, she sold for enough that she made a little profit even with the added expense.

 

[Sir Loin]

Backhoeboogie
Re:

Sir Loin, with all due respect, that should not be his goal. Keep the calf on a bottle. Get a bottle rack. Please don't tell anyone, especially 4H kids, to raise a calf like this.

Why? If the calf can drink water, he can drink milk. And from there it is a whole lot easier to get him on to feed.
What am I missing?
SL

 

[hraz]

From a digestion and overall health standpoint drinking MILK from the bottle is better. The angle at which they drink from the bottle directs the milk into the abomasum instead of the rumen (which does not function well, if at all, in very young calves). This causes the release of an enzyme which helps the milk curdle and the calf digest it fully. As the calf begins to eat hay and grain the rumen begins to develop. By the end of the 4th week the calf can utilize hay and grain fairly well.

 

[Sir Loin]

Re:

From a digestion and overall health standpoint drinking MILK from the bottle is better. The angle at which they drink from the bottle directs the milk into the abomasum instead of the rumen (which does not function well, if at all, in very young calves). This causes the release of an enzyme which helps the milk curdle and the calf digest it fully. As the calf begins to eat hay and grain the rumen begins to develop. By the end of the 4th week the calf can utilize hay and grain fairly well.

OK, if I buy that statement as truth, what is wrong with this:

1. bottle feed him by using a bottle with a nipple on it.
2. use a bucket with a nipple on it.
3. bucket feed him. He drinks right out of the bucket with no nipple.

I don't see where the problem is when both 1 and 2 have him in exactly the very same position when nursing and 3 is used in the 4 week to switch him over to feed.

Aren't we saying the same thing?
SL

 

[msscamp]

Backhoeboogie
Re:

Sir Loin, with all due respect, that should not be his goal. Keep the calf on a bottle. Get a bottle rack. Please don't tell anyone, especially 4H kids, to raise a calf like this.

Why? If the calf can drink water, he can drink milk. And from there it is a whole lot easier to get him on to feed.
What am I missing?
SL

The esphogeal groove, the funtion in plays in non-ruminant calves and their absorbtion of nutrients. I guess it never occured to you to question why nature intended calves to nurse? Yet again, ..... :roll:

 

[hraz]

Boy howdy! You love to argue. Your original quote did not specify that time line. As for truth or not, the info is easy enough to find.

 

[Razorback21]

Bottle calf and Bucket calf is a regional thing too. Back home in Arkansas, it was a bucket calf, no matter how it got its milk. I get corrected every time I say bucket calf up here. "Don't you mean bottle calf?" is what gets quipped back to me.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Backhoeboogie
Re:

Sir Loin, with all due respect, that should not be his goal. Keep the calf on a bottle. Get a bottle rack. Please don't tell anyone, especially 4H kids, to raise a calf like this.

Why? If the calf can drink water, he can drink milk. And from there it is a whole lot easier to get him on to feed.
What am I missing?
SL

SL, Msscamp explained it quite well. Better than I could of. There is a difference and I have seen it.

Razorback, if I have a steer that I don't much care about, I can put him on a bucket. He's probably going to doggy on me a little but I don't care. He's probably just veal. I refer to him as a bucket calf. If I have a heifer that I intend to keep, she's either going on the nurse cow or on a bottle. I won't call it a bucket calf. It is either a nurse calf or a bottle calf, depending on how she is nourished. Maybe this is indeed a regional thing, I can't tell you. All I can tell you is that I state what they are.

 

[Keren]

This is one of those things that is going to be argued again and again and again and again . . .

When a calf is born, the abomasum is significantly larger than the rumen. An adult bovine has ratios of about 80% rumen, 5% reticulum, 8% omasum and 7% abomasum (% of total stomach volume). But at birth the figures for rumen and abomasum are almost reversed.

This is because of the oesophogeal groove (also known as the reticular groove) which pops up on these boards quite frequently, which ensures that milk goes directly to the abomasum, rather than the rumen where it will

a) be broken down completely giving very little nutrition to the calf, and
b) introduce bacterial into the rumen which ordinarily would not be there - rumen bacteria is ingested when the calf begins to nibble grass, and the population slowly grows and the rumen develops in conjunction with this. By introducing the 'wrong' bacteria, the 'right' bacteria are slower to develop.

When a calf drinks from a bucket, his head points down and he 'gulps' rather than 'sucks'. The oesophogeal groove does not open, and the milk enters the rumen, where it has the effects mentioned above ^^. The sucking action and the head tilted up to nurse is what opens the groove.


As a side point, it is also often asked on these boards "I've got a poddy calf, and I'm giving it milk. Do I need to supply water and feed?" and the answer is a resounding YES!

By withholding green feed, roughage etc from a calf's diet, you will delay development of both the rumen and the population of rumen bacteria, resulting in a growth and development setback for the calf.





I'm actually suprised at the riot caused by the bucket/bottle calf issue. Here in Australia, we call them poddy calves (or poddy lambs, kids, foals). But the terms bucket and bottle are also used. BUT, really, its just a management choice isnt it? They are all orphans, who cares what you call them?



Going back to the original post, a poddy is a great way to introduce your kids to showing! Hope you and they have fun and keep us updated with some photos when you get them

 

[dun]

I realize the scientific stuff about bottle feeding, but how does that explain that thousands of calves are raised evey year by bucket and they don;t look any different then a bottle calf. Of the 4 dairys that I freqent in this area, 1 uses bottles the other 3 use buckets. I don;t see any difference in health, growth or productivity as cows from one dairy to the other.

 

[msscamp]

How often do you have to feed them? They would be about 10 days old.

You're probably going to have a battle when transitioning a 10 day old calf from his mother to milk replacer, so I would feed a smaller amount of milk replacer (say a pint or two) more frequently (every 2-4 hours, depending on whether I was feeding a pint or 2 pints) and monitor the calf's manure. Milk replacer is different than mother's milk, and can cause scours, so if I saw any sign of loose/runny manure I would cut back on the milk replacer and increase the number of feedings until it cleared up - it is much easier to prevent scours than to try to fix them, and it's easier on the calf. At 10 days old, I would be prepared for a battle because the calf will be able to tell the difference between its mothers tit and a rubber nipple, and he/she will probably reject the rubber nipple. I would use a sheep nipple on a 16 oz bottle, for the first few feedings until the calf put the nipple together with food, then transition to a regular calf nipple - and start gradually, increasing the amount of milk by a 1/2 pint over a couple of feeding. Be patient, work with the calf, but be prepared for the possibility that you may very well have to let him go hungry for a feeding or two before he accepts the nipple - because of that I would feed only a pint about every 2 hours. A calf that has not nursed for a while, then suddenly receives a large amount of milk (even 2 pints can be a large amount, depending on how long it's been since the calf nursed) is a sure way to end up with a case of scours in most cases. As you build the calf up in quantity, you can cut down on the number of feedings. I generally built my bottle calves up to 4 pints in 4 feedings/day - spaced as evenly as I can do it over a 24 hour period. Once they were eating at least a pound of grain/day, as well as a flake or two of good quality grass hay alternated with alfalfa hay, I cut down on the number of feedings, while gradually increasing the amount of grain until they were on 2-3 pounds of grain along with several flakes of grass alternated with alfalfa hay/day.

 

[backhoeboogie]

I realize the scientific stuff about bottle feeding, but how does that explain that thousands of calves are raised evey year by bucket and they don;t look any different then a bottle calf. Of the 4 dairys that I freqent in this area, 1 uses bottles the other 3 use buckets. I don;t see any difference in health, growth or productivity as cows from one dairy to the other.

Dun, All I can tell you is that we did see a difference. We thought the buckets would be so much easier. They actually weren't and then we noticed the difference in calves that were on the bucket versus the ones that were not. This was back in the 70's and I think we had about a dozen at the time with some on buckets with nipples and some on bottles. The calves were grouped by size in each pen and we at first attributed it to size. But that whole group started on buckets doggied on us a little. It didn't make sense to us (at the time).

As the calves got older they began to knock the buckets off of the rails so we tried getting them to drink straight from the bucket. Buckets still got knocked over. Bottles in the racks resulted in no waste. From then on we went to bottles with racks and stuck to it. Back then we built racks out of 2 by 6 scrap and we had corral chutes. Now you can use cow panels and wire racks specially made for bottles.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Every time this subject comes up I pipe in, advocating bottles. If I truly thought there was no difference, I wouldn't get involved. I believe in bottles. Keren and msscamp explain the reasoning quite nicely. This year all the bargain split calves I bought were beef calves and they went on a nurse cow. There's no doubt that is better than a bottle and it is my preferred method.

 

[Daisy452]

How often do you have to feed them? They would be about 10 days old.

You're probably going to have a battle when transitioning a 10 day old calf from his mother to milk replacer,

Actually most dairies seperate the calves from the cows the first day of birth and bottle fed them from then on, starting with the first bottle as colstrum. They do this because they dont want the calf damaging the utter of the cow. The calves are kept in a small individual "calf dome". They are feed 2-3 times a day by a bottle or a bucket.

 

[Daisy452]

You're probably going to have a battle when transitioning a 10 day old calf from his mother to milk replacer,

Actually most dairies seperate the calves from the cows the first day of birth and bottle fed them from then on, starting with the first bottle as colstrum. They do this because they dont want the calf damaging the utter of the cow. The calves are kept in a small individual "calf dome". They are feed 2-3 times a day by a bottle or a bucket.

 

[J&T Farm]

We call them bottle babies, but I think eveyone has there own way of raising one and as long as the calf does good for them, thats all that matters. We use bottles, but we have had a occasional calf that would not suck but would drink it from the bucket. Whatever works for one person might not work for another, I guess it's the same with a calf too. But I prefer a bottle just because I am usually better at getting them to take it, and I have seen alot of milk wasted trying to feed out of a bucket with a nipple on it. One good hit with the head and its gone, and that stuff is expensive. I think it is more fun for kids to bottle feed a calf anyway I loved it when I was young. :lol: