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Cattle Boards
Breeding / Calving Issues
Obsessive/Compulsive Sucking Disorder in Calf
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<blockquote data-quote="Lucky_P" data-source="post: 1167055" data-attributes="member: 12607"><p>Egads. When I hear of folks still feeding a bottle to a calf @ 6 months, I just shake my head.</p><p>Agree, it sounds like every bottle calf I've ever raised. They'll suck anything that'll stand still for it.</p><p></p><p>I've raised hundreds of bottle calves. Never had one on the bottle for longer than 6 weeks - though I will say that nowadays, the dairy nutritionists are recommending a longer milk-feeding period for developing dairy heifers than they used to - on out to 8-10 weeks. </p><p>From Day One, at every feeding, and any time I happened to be passing by the calf's pen, I'd shove a handful of calf-starter into their mouths. Sure, early on, they usually would wallow it around and drop most of it, but they get then hang of it. Often had 'em eating 1.5#/day by 4 weeks, and always by 6 wks...would stop the bottle cold-turkey and they'd up grain consumption to 5 #/day pretty quickly.</p><p>Needs to be a good, tasty, aromatic ration to get 'em going. I've had some, from SS and other sources that were dry and unpalatable... Purina was always my go-to...plenty of molasses to get those babies WANTING to eat it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lucky_P, post: 1167055, member: 12607"] Egads. When I hear of folks still feeding a bottle to a calf @ 6 months, I just shake my head. Agree, it sounds like every bottle calf I've ever raised. They'll suck anything that'll stand still for it. I've raised hundreds of bottle calves. Never had one on the bottle for longer than 6 weeks - though I will say that nowadays, the dairy nutritionists are recommending a longer milk-feeding period for developing dairy heifers than they used to - on out to 8-10 weeks. From Day One, at every feeding, and any time I happened to be passing by the calf's pen, I'd shove a handful of calf-starter into their mouths. Sure, early on, they usually would wallow it around and drop most of it, but they get then hang of it. Often had 'em eating 1.5#/day by 4 weeks, and always by 6 wks...would stop the bottle cold-turkey and they'd up grain consumption to 5 #/day pretty quickly. Needs to be a good, tasty, aromatic ration to get 'em going. I've had some, from SS and other sources that were dry and unpalatable... Purina was always my go-to...plenty of molasses to get those babies WANTING to eat it. [/QUOTE]
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