Bottle calf.

[hillsdown]

Bottle calf 6 litres of milk replacer a day and is on really good pasture. Was chewing cud at 5 days old.8 weeks old in the
picture. Gelbvieh/HerefordX.

Steer out of a heifer 14 weeks old and still on Dam. Pb Gelbvieh.

The bottle calf is a lot chunkier(fatter) and the Dam raised calf is a lot more muscled.
When the bottle calf is finished his third bag of replacer I will ween him and he will have to gain strictly on a grass diet.So he will probably be 11 weeks old at that time.So even all that good milk and high quality feed you can still see a difference.The only thing I could do differently is to pull him from the group he is in and feed him calf starter and hay.But since no one else is getting that he won't either.If he was a heifer that I wanted to retain he would be treated differently.

 

[randiliana]

I hope you are not expecting great gains from this calf if you are just going to put him out on grass once you wean him from the bottle. I expect he will look pretty much the same as a calf that lost it's mother on pasture would at that age, if you don't feed it some sort of grain. After all, you need to remember that all your other calves are still getting milk in addition to the grass.

We are buying a calf starter ration from our local Co-op that is decently priced ($8.20 for a 50 lb bag). I think it is pretty cheap when you figure that if you didn't feed it you would have a pot bellied scrub other wise. We ran out, and the co-op was not able to get some in for a while, and even though we were feeding them grain you could see them start to suffer before we got them back onto the calf ration. Only took 2 weeks to see them start to suffer.

 

[rockridgecattle]

Randiliana,
the calf starter you get from your local co-op, is it the feed rite brand blue medallion? or co-op brand?
Ours is feed rite (our co-op is a feed rite dealer and is 14.6 a bag.

RR

 

[Alice]

I hope you are not expecting great gains from this calf if you are just going to put him out on grass once you wean him from the bottle. I expect he will look pretty much the same as a calf that lost it's mother on pasture would at that age, if you don't feed it some sort of grain. After all, you need to remember that all your other calves are still getting milk in addition to the grass.

:nod: What Randi said!

Plus, that calf will be ripe for respiratory illnesses.

Alice

 

[randiliana]

Randiliana,
the calf starter you get from your local co-op, is it the feed rite brand blue medallion? or co-op brand?
Ours is feed rite (our co-op is a feed rite dealer and is 14.6 a bag.

RR

It is the Co-op brand. It is called 'Dairy Calf Starter' and it is 18% protein. Here it costs $8.20 per bag.