Preston - Commercial Dairy farms generally remove calves from mothers and feed them with bottle for 3-10 days, then "bucket train" them to drink their milk or milk replacer.preston39":1h5ou8a7 said:
Suffice to say the Brown Swiss calf is the most difficult of the dairy breed calves to do this with. Either through lack of intelligence or sheer stubborness, most Swiss calves will not learn to drink milk out of bucket. They will, literally die rather than drink out of bucket. For those inexperienced with Swiss, the folks who try may get frustrated and yell or holler at calf.
At this point, calf just entirely shuts down and will not eat at all! Not saying it can't be done by some lover of the breed who has hours to dilly-dally away on 1 calf, but even most Swiss farmers will just raise calf on nipple bottle till they are 350 ,lbs(3-4months) old. Pretty much want to leave them nurse mother, or bottle feed them if you have to.
Raising Brown Swiss dairy calves will take the patience of Job, duplicated 3 times per feeding. That said, if you can keep them alive, after they reach 400 lbs., they make excellent dairy stock. Big, powerful cows with lots of fat&protien. Still stubborn though. Hope this clarifies.
