How do I wean a bottle baby?

[WillowFarmRi]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and I need some advice on weaning a bottle fed White faced Hereford calf. She is 5 and a half weeks old and we feed her a bottle of milk replacer twice a day. She nibbles on hay but she has no interest in starter feed at all. We don't think we should cut back on the milk replacer until or unless she eats the feed. Is she too young to eat regular grain? How do I get her off the bottle? She had scours but that has cleared up and she is doing great. Any advice you can offer is appreciated.

 

[snake67]

Far too young to even think about weaning - put her on a pail - but this animal is yours to feed until you sell it or raise it to the point it can support itself.

And you need to feed it more - and probably more often

Another few months and more to go!

If it is onerous - ship it - that is what they are for

Bez

 

[pdfangus]

what Bez said.....

until the calf is eating feed well, consistently and in good quantity......it has to have milk or milk replacer....

 

[Dlongmo]

Over time I have learned to pair them with a calf ( even if it's older) they seem to Mimic others and will learn to eat grain more quickly ... If possible I always pair a newbie ( if not sick) with a more experienced calf ..

 

[Tim/South]

If you can put the calf in a small confined area with feed it will help it to begin eating. When we had bottle calves that is what we did. Place some calf manna in a small container. The calf will get bored and find it, then begin to nibble. Same goes for drinking water. Just keep the container clean and the water fresh.
We did not increase the bottle feedings. As the calves grew so did their need for more nutrients. We wanted their desire for more to be supplied by eating.
It is nice if they have another calf around and can learn to eat by watching it.

 

[piedmontese]

If its 5 weeks now you got a ways to go. It all depends on how good you can get her eating grain. You can wean at 12 weeks easily if I have her on grain and hay good.if that's the plan I would cut her back to 1 bottle at about 10 weeks to encourage her to eat more grain and hay. No need to give her more than 2 bottles a day unless u want her to get scours. Give her fresh water everyday,even if she didn't drink it. Keep grain out but not much yet because if it sits too long they don't want it.feed her calf manna, not sweet feed.

 

[WillowFarmRi]

Thanks for all the good advice everyone. She is in a pen with fresh water, fresh hay and fresh sweet feed daily. No other young ones around to pair her with. Maybe she will be more interested in the calf manna so we will switch to that and cut back on the bottle in another 5 weeks or so. Thanks all!

 

[snake67]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and I need some advice on weaning a bottle fed White faced Hereford calf. She is 5 and a half weeks old and we feed her a bottle of milk replacer twice a day. She nibbles on hay but she has no interest in starter feed at all. We don't think we should cut back on the milk replacer until or unless she eats the feed. Is she too young to eat regular grain? How do I get her off the bottle? She had scours but that has cleared up and she is doing great. Any advice you can offer is appreciated.

 

[TexasBred]

Thanks for all the good advice everyone. She is in a pen with fresh water, fresh hay and fresh sweet feed daily. No other young ones around to pair her with. Maybe she will be more interested in the calf manna so we will switch to that and cut back on the bottle in another 5 weeks or so. Thanks all!

Don't feed straight Calf Manna....mix some of it in with the sweet feed.

 

[piedmontese]

Thanks for all the good advice everyone. She is in a pen with fresh water, fresh hay and fresh sweet feed daily. No other young ones around to pair her with. Maybe she will be more interested in the calf manna so we will switch to that and cut back on the bottle in another 5 weeks or so. Thanks all!

Don't feed straight Calf Manna....mix some of it in with the sweet feed.

Why not straight manna? Now that u bring that up I remember we mixed it because they liked the sweet feed and the cost.

 

[TexasBred]

Thanks for all the good advice everyone. She is in a pen with fresh water, fresh hay and fresh sweet feed daily. No other young ones around to pair her with. Maybe she will be more interested in the calf manna so we will switch to that and cut back on the bottle in another 5 weeks or so. Thanks all!

Don't feed straight Calf Manna....mix some of it in with the sweet feed.

Why not straight manna? Now that u bring that up I remember we mixed it because they liked the sweet feed and the cost.

And it's 25% protein. The calf doesn't need that much. But mixed with the sweet feed it will really compliment it.

 

[Tim/South]

We fed calf manna straight. The calves just munch on it to begin with, probably did not eat more than a cup full twice a day.
Once they begin eating a lot then we switched to regular pelleted feed.

 

[Lucky_P]

I usually tried to have my bottle calves eating well and weaned by 4-6 weeks, almost never had to feed a bottle past 6 wks. Every time you feed or pass by, shove a handful of calf-starter in the calf's mouth. Once they're eating 1.5# per day, you can stop the bottle and bump up the grain ration pretty quickly; they'll up their consumption pretty rapidly once you stop that bottle - but, as others have said, until they're consistently eating the starter ration, don't stop with the bottle.
Confined to a small stall or hutch, with fresh grain in front of 'em, they usually catch on pretty quick.

Nutritionists/rumen physiologists who've studied rumen development are no longer recommending hay for calves under 2 months of age - the grains in a good quality calf-starter ration actually do a better job of getting rumen papillae developed and functioning than does hay.