This may sound like a terrible idea but I was wondering if anyone has bought baby calves and tried group feeding them with a group bottle feeder like they do in Europe and NZ. I figure you would have to top notch at your management but I think would make it easier for one person to feed alot of calves. Just asking if anyone has tried, thought, or heard of it being done.
Mob Feeding bought calves
- Thread starter skip7879
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regolith
Well-known member
Well, I'm in NZ, and yes, I've done it. I bought and raised 53 dairy calves on milk powder in 2004 and 51 in 2005 and that was how I started my herd.
Raising calves born to my own herd on whole milk is easier. I've got 3 ten- or twelve-teat feeders that I hang from the back of a tractor to feed them outside. A lot of farmers instead use a bike-towed trailer, and there must be half a dozen different designs of containers on skids or 44-gallon drums with holes drilled for the teats still in use or abandoned behind sheds on NZ farms.
The old ones tend to use tubes leading from the teat to the bottom of the container. The modern ones gravity feed to the teat.
A good manager will raise a good calf regardless of the system. That's all I'm saying - you don't have to be good to mob-feed calves, you'll just get a better result if you observe everything and do things right.
Raising calves born to my own herd on whole milk is easier. I've got 3 ten- or twelve-teat feeders that I hang from the back of a tractor to feed them outside. A lot of farmers instead use a bike-towed trailer, and there must be half a dozen different designs of containers on skids or 44-gallon drums with holes drilled for the teats still in use or abandoned behind sheds on NZ farms.
The old ones tend to use tubes leading from the teat to the bottom of the container. The modern ones gravity feed to the teat.
A good manager will raise a good calf regardless of the system. That's all I'm saying - you don't have to be good to mob-feed calves, you'll just get a better result if you observe everything and do things right.
regolith
Well-known member
Well, yes and no. I usually start them in a shed in groups of ten - if they're born to my herd they are grouped in the order of birth - I start a new pen when there's enough in the first and so on. The ones I bought were penned in groups of ten as they were bought, which had much the same effect of grouping them by age.
Once they're on grass, I run a mob of about 30 - 33, so I'll probably have an older group and a younger group. Once I start weaning (I wean weekly following a criteria of minimum weight, minimum age and development of body capacity, minimum age is eight weeks), I split the weaned calves into a separate mob and once the size of the group has dropped sufficiently I'll put all the milk calves together.
There's a big variation in size within the groups - some of the calves are pure Jersey, some pure Holstein and others are crosses. They all compete well; I've never had to pull one from the group though I do wean individually not as a group so if one is taking a bit longer to reach weaning weight she simply stays on milk a week or two longer than the average.
With the type of teat I use I consider it important to have all, or nearly all the teats on the feeder used every feed. They soften and let the milk flow faster as they age, and I got caught out one year with having had a group of five or six on a ten-teat feeder - they use the centre teats by preference and if one latches onto an less-used teat they can't drink as fast as the others.
I didn't think to mention it at first, since it's illegal to sell calves less than four days old in NZ, but no calf is added to an older group until at least four days old. They're given colostrum and trained on the feeder in a separate shed during that time, and the bought calves someone else would have done the same.
Once they're on grass, I run a mob of about 30 - 33, so I'll probably have an older group and a younger group. Once I start weaning (I wean weekly following a criteria of minimum weight, minimum age and development of body capacity, minimum age is eight weeks), I split the weaned calves into a separate mob and once the size of the group has dropped sufficiently I'll put all the milk calves together.
There's a big variation in size within the groups - some of the calves are pure Jersey, some pure Holstein and others are crosses. They all compete well; I've never had to pull one from the group though I do wean individually not as a group so if one is taking a bit longer to reach weaning weight she simply stays on milk a week or two longer than the average.
With the type of teat I use I consider it important to have all, or nearly all the teats on the feeder used every feed. They soften and let the milk flow faster as they age, and I got caught out one year with having had a group of five or six on a ten-teat feeder - they use the centre teats by preference and if one latches onto an less-used teat they can't drink as fast as the others.
I didn't think to mention it at first, since it's illegal to sell calves less than four days old in NZ, but no calf is added to an older group until at least four days old. They're given colostrum and trained on the feeder in a separate shed during that time, and the bought calves someone else would have done the same.
Do find its easier for disease control to move the calves say once a week once they are on grass. I wasn't thinking about pastureing them but thats a good idea. I was just going to use a large hut and bed it really well to make sure the calves aren't laying in manure.
regolith
Well-known member
One of the big drivers for getting calves onto grass early is disease control. The calves I bought in 2005 arrived with rotavirus and I've seen the bug every year since, a couple of times to the extent that I stopped using the shed even for the youngest calves.
Whether you can run them on grass will depend on your climate. They need shelter, regardless.
The very young calves, I might leave them on the area for a week or even two - they're not eating much and they get a fairly big area, I just don't want them to soil it badly enough that the cows won't want to eat it a few weeks later. Once they're eating a significant amount they get no more than three days in a paddock. I move them before they've picked out all the best leaves.
Part of the reason for that is that I've got a herd of cows coming in to graze behind them and I want the herd to get high quality feed. The other reason is just keeping the calves growing to their potential. If you leave thirty calves on 2 ha for a week you can look at the grass and see that there's lots there, but the calves are going hungry because they've saved the least palatable clumps to last and now they still don't want to eat them.
Once they're weaned I'm moving the group every day to a fresh paddock, they just skim the top off it and they're moved on. That has the advantage also of getting them used to the routine of walking through a gate every day. The amount they eat becomes unsustainable at around four to five months old for having them grazing in front of the cows, and then I allocate them a paddock and break feed it with electric fences, moving them every second day usually. They're not pushed to clean up the grass even at this stage, not till they're around a year old.
The simple answer regarding worms is that I don't really think about them. This regime effectively prevents the build-up of high worm burdens - I don't return calves to the same pasture when the grass has regrown, the cows have grazed it at least once if not twice before the calves see it again. I use a combination wormer very young - when I vaccinate at six weeks old, then at two - three month intervals when I remember or if I see a couple of dirty tails.
Whether you can run them on grass will depend on your climate. They need shelter, regardless.
The very young calves, I might leave them on the area for a week or even two - they're not eating much and they get a fairly big area, I just don't want them to soil it badly enough that the cows won't want to eat it a few weeks later. Once they're eating a significant amount they get no more than three days in a paddock. I move them before they've picked out all the best leaves.
Part of the reason for that is that I've got a herd of cows coming in to graze behind them and I want the herd to get high quality feed. The other reason is just keeping the calves growing to their potential. If you leave thirty calves on 2 ha for a week you can look at the grass and see that there's lots there, but the calves are going hungry because they've saved the least palatable clumps to last and now they still don't want to eat them.
Once they're weaned I'm moving the group every day to a fresh paddock, they just skim the top off it and they're moved on. That has the advantage also of getting them used to the routine of walking through a gate every day. The amount they eat becomes unsustainable at around four to five months old for having them grazing in front of the cows, and then I allocate them a paddock and break feed it with electric fences, moving them every second day usually. They're not pushed to clean up the grass even at this stage, not till they're around a year old.
The simple answer regarding worms is that I don't really think about them. This regime effectively prevents the build-up of high worm burdens - I don't return calves to the same pasture when the grass has regrown, the cows have grazed it at least once if not twice before the calves see it again. I use a combination wormer very young - when I vaccinate at six weeks old, then at two - three month intervals when I remember or if I see a couple of dirty tails.
