bottle calf-when to wean?

[pdubdo]

Got a bottle calf in our suburban back yard...not by choice! He's right at 6 weeks old. He currently eats about 1 lb of mana pro calf feed twice a day, drinks a quart of milk replacer morning and night, grazes on some wheat/oats/clover I luckily covered my garden with over-winter, and eats a little alfalfa hay we just started putting out. He's been eating on the wheat and the calf feed for about 2 weeks. At some point, we are going to throw him back with the herd to fend for himself. I was ideally going to wait till 12 weeks and vaccinate him just prior. But his mooing is getting louder...Once he's with the herd, he's really on his own-we aren't set up to check our cows more than twice a week. Any advice on how early we can put him back with the herd? Should I wait till 10-12 weeks and just apologize to the neighbors and hide from the HOA??...

 

[farmerjan]

Any cows in the herd with calves his size? He might learn to steal. But at this point he will not do very good without supplemental feed. I honestly would not put him out there now, he just will not grow and then it will be a sorry life for him, if you can't supplement him daily at least with feed.

 

[BFE]

I agree with Jan. Put him on Craigslist and sell him if you can't give him special treatment.

 

[Lee VanRoss]

You need to get out of cattle if you can only check your herd twice a week. You should concentrate your efforts on what is important to you.
Apparently it is not livestock. Question asked, Question answered.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Calf will PROBLY need supplemental feed for 6 months. Any earlier, and theres a risk of death loss.
I definitely wouldnt turn the calf out b4 4 months. And then, I would want its rumen working on grass only and off of feed.

Calf like that will bring good dollars at the sale around here tho. Then its someone elses project

Speaking of.....
Bring him up here. U buy the feed, I'll give him back at the end of summer....

 

[Ky hills]

I would not turn it out with the herd. Calves that young need a good quality feed and would not do well if they even survived out on their own. We had five bottle calves this winter, and are now 5 months and have just recently been turned out with a few other calves that are a little bigger, and are being fed daily. The youngest of the bottle calves did not do as well as the others and we sold it last week at the stockyards for $237.

 

[pdubdo]

Thanks for the helpful replies. Would have sold him right away but my son is learning a lot and really enjoys doing this. He'll be at the sale barn in late august anyway, so maybe we'll just wait till then and I'll keep trying to talk him into cashing out early.

 

[Ky hills]

That's good a child can learn a lot from the responsibility of caring for an animal.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Tell the neighbors to get over it.

The kid needs the pleasure of raising that calf!

 

[Hereford2]

I didn't ever turn a bottle calf out with the herd before 5 months of age. While we do check on our cattle daily, mature cattle that have already had all calves for the year, aren't going to drop dead being checked on twice a week. And while twice a week isn't ideal, I don't think we should be discouraging anyone interested in any kind of agriculture, especially now a days, when there doesn't seem to be as much interest in it as there was, Even 20 year's ago.

 

[farmerjan]

Most of our cow/calf pairs that go out to pasture get checked an average of twice a week, sometimes more.... Real hot we check water more frequently, sometimes just checking cattle from a distance .....but babies just can't do that on their own.
Hope that you can balance the calf being there and your son getting some good education and experience.

 

[Stakker1]

I wean my dairy calves at 12 weeks old when they are consuming at least 3 lbs or more of calf starter. They are definitely not ready to enter the herd with older and more aggressive animals. If time doesnt permit you to supplement him I would sell him asap.. It would be different if his "dam" raised him in the pasture he would be better equipped to handle the situation, but he would still need to be older than 6 weeks.. good luck with him.

---

 

[Brute 23]

Thanks for the helpful replies. Would have sold him right away but my son is learning a lot and really enjoys doing this. He'll be at the sale barn in late august anyway, so maybe we'll just wait till then and I'll keep trying to talk him into cashing out early.

I'm in the same boat. Growing up we never kept bottle calves. My dad always gave them away... if we found them... except for 1 that we begged him to keep. Even then the only comment we got was yall can have it if yall can catch it.

You can look back on the posts here and see I too now have a bottle calf. It was pure luck we were at that property working cattle and came up one short. We were able to find the cow in the brush dead because I had caught the cattle in a trap a couple days before in preparation to work them. The ONLY reason I kept the calf was because I have a 15 yr old son and wanted him to experience it. Every one who has cattle or will have cattle should raise one bottle calf IMO to understand what it's like. LoL He has really enjoyed it.

It's a pain in the butt. It consumes a lot of time for one animal. I won't do it again if I dont have to. There are too many people better at it and set up to do it right for me to fumble thru it again. He has turned out good thanks to the advice of most of these people on here.

I have to agree with them that it wont benefit you or the calf to cut it loose in the pasture. I put ours in with some replacement heifers so he has some other cattle to be with and we can baby him along.

... and I dont check cattle at some places for weeks at a time. Some are up to 2.5 hrs away. There are people who look at their cattle every day but they dont know what they are doing so it doesnt matter. How often you check your cattle is in no way a measure of how good you are at raising cattle.

 

[Oldtimer]

You need to get out of cattle if you can only check your herd twice a week. You should concentrate your efforts on what is important to you.
Apparently it is not livestock. Question asked, Question answered.

In this country there are cows that aren't seen from the time they go out in spring til they are rounded up in the fall. When you have pastures of 20,000 to 50,000 acres , often in rough country you can't check all of them twice a week .

 

[Lee VanRoss]

OT> I got that, but you don't worry about a calf mooing loud. That was the give away.
Hope you are getting enough rain. LVR

 

[Hereford2]

Just because a person checks on their cattle daily, it doesn't mean that they don't know what they're doing

 

[Brute 23]

Just because a person checks on their cattle daily, it doesn't mean that they don't know what they're doing

I reread my statement and I guess it could be taken more than one way.

Basically I was saying if you dont know what you are doing it doesnt matter how often you check them things will be messed up. How often you check cattle, no matter of its daily or every few months, is not a measure of how good you are at raising them.

There are good cattlemen on both sides of the spectrum and crappy cattlemen on both sides of the spectrum.

 

[Hereford2]

Gotcha!

 

[Hereford2]

Thank you for clarifying that. I totally agree....!!

 

[dt34715]

I put one back with my cows at 10 weeks. Now at 6 months, she will only weigh around 150 to 200 lbs.

I would definitely give it a good worming before turning out.
I would probably keep giving feed for a while.

This is just my thoughts based on my own experience this past fall.