Calf rearing- First timer

Wane calves by age or weight?
Neither, wean by how much meal they are eating. When that is exactly though, I mean you get a feel for when a bunch of calves are eating a good bit of meal n you can start to ease them off milk. It's more than a kg a day though imo. By the time they are completely weaned ours are eating 4 to 5kgs a day.
 
Neither, wean by how much meal they are eating. When that is exactly though, I mean you get a feel for when a bunch of calves are eating a good bit of meal n you can start to ease them off milk. It's more than a kg a day though imo. By the time they are completely weaned ours are eating 4 to 5kgs a day.
Jaysus I'd find it hard to get 4 or 5kgs of meal into a 2 month old calf. There's lads finishing cattle out of sheds on less than that!
 
Neither, wean by how much meal they are eating. When that is exactly though, I mean you get a feel for when a bunch of calves are eating a good bit of meal n you can start to ease them off milk. It's more than a kg a day though imo. By the time they are completely weaned ours are eating 4 to 5kgs a day.

4 to 5kgs a day????

I would be weaning calves once they are eating a kilo, often before this for the calves that are poor eaters.

What would you calve weight be at 365 days of age?
 
Neither, wean by how much meal they are eating. When that is exactly though, I mean you get a feel for when a bunch of calves are eating a good bit of meal n you can start to ease them off milk. It's more than a kg a day though imo. By the time they are completely weaned ours are eating 4 to 5kgs a day.

Do you not wean until they are 12 months old ?
.4 or .5 kg would be a bit mean , but there must be a decimal point missing in your post ?
 
Bulls would be around 420-480kgs now that I think on it. We used to keep a few for the mart the following winter/spring. Heifers no real notion tbh.
 
We are taking the plunge here and have sourced a few simmental heifer calves direct from a farmer. Its mainly for to occupy the kids for the summer and develop their interest in cattle. We will be collecting them later this week. They are 4 to 6 weeks old. Our plan is to have them in a 1 acre garden which has nice clean grass and is close to the house. They have not been outside yet. Will it be safe enough to keep them outside? The field has high hedges and loads of shelter and we have a hutch that will provide shelter for them when it is raining.

They have to travel an hour to here. We plan to give them a probiotic tube when they arrive. Will we need to vaccinate them for anything? We don't vaccinate any of the suckler born calves here?
 
We are taking the plunge here and have sourced a few simmental heifer calves direct from a farmer. Its mainly for to occupy the kids for the summer and develop their interest in cattle. We will be collecting them later this week. They are 4 to 6 weeks old. Our plan is to have them in a 1 acre garden which has nice clean grass and is close to the house. They have not been outside yet. Will it be safe enough to keep them outside? The field has high hedges and loads of shelter and we have a hutch that will provide shelter for them when it is raining.

They have to travel an hour to here. We plan to give them a probiotic tube when they arrive. Will we need to vaccinate them for anything? We don't vaccinate any of the suckler born calves here?
They’ll be fine,just feed them hard.:Thumbp2:
 
We are taking the plunge here and have sourced a few simmental heifer calves direct from a farmer. Its mainly for to occupy the kids for the summer and develop their interest in cattle. We will be collecting them later this week. They are 4 to 6 weeks old. Our plan is to have them in a 1 acre garden which has nice clean grass and is close to the house. They have not been outside yet. Will it be safe enough to keep them outside? The field has high hedges and loads of shelter and we have a hutch that will provide shelter for them when it is raining.

They have to travel an hour to here. We plan to give them a probiotic tube when they arrive. Will we need to vaccinate them for anything? We don't vaccinate any of the suckler born calves here?
Cant see any issue with this, not into vaccinating here and cant see any reason you would need to start where stock will be outdoors and separated from other young stock.

Only thing on the outdoors I would say is to watch for a sharp change in night temperatures or a rough couple of days weather when they arrive that could give them a shock
 
Any of ye feed this kind of stuff? The calves have arrived and are eating at the bedding in their shed. Local vet has this stuff at a special price as he has a few bags left and not much demand because it's getting out of season for feeding calves. Was going to to chance a bag of this stuff tomorrow.

download.jpeg IMG_20200627_183619_4.jpg
 
https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/first-fibre-the-first-of-its-kind/
Looks like an expensive way to feed hay and straw.
Any of ye feed this kind of stuff? The calves have arrived and are eating at the bedding in their shed. Local vet has this stuff at a special price as he has a few bags left and not much demand because it's getting out of season for feeding calves. Was going to to chance a bag of this stuff tomorrow.

View attachment 79824 View attachment 79825
 
Any of ye feed this kind of stuff? The calves have arrived and are eating at the bedding in their shed. Local vet has this stuff at a special price as he has a few bags left and not much demand because it's getting out of season for feeding calves. Was going to to chance a bag of this stuff tomorrow.

View attachment 79824 View attachment 79825
Not sure whether it's better than straw but this summer the kids have bucket reared calves and the calves got straw ad lib to eat. I was amazed how much straw they ate, it's supposed to be better for the development of their stomach and they don't get pot bellies.
 
Not sure whether it's better than straw but this summer the kids have bucket reared calves and the calves got straw ad lib to eat. I was amazed how much straw they ate, it's supposed to be better for the development of their stomach and they don't get pot bellies.

there's a good bit of straw in one of those bales linked above. I realistically can't go buying a bale just to feed 2 of them. A 20kg bale of this stuff @ €10 is probably the easiest option. There's Lucern, Timothy and straw in it along with mollasses. Vet had it at a discussion group meeting last year and it was really nice smelling stuff. For the sake of 2 calves it might be worth it
 
there's a good bit of straw in one of those bales linked above. I realistically can't go buying a bale just to feed 2 of them. A 20kg bale of this stuff @ €10 is probably the easiest option. There's Lucern, Timothy and straw in it along with mollasses. Vet had it at a discussion group meeting last year and it was really nice smelling stuff. For the sake of 2 calves it might be worth it
A couple of bales wont break the bank but personally if I could lay my hands on a few square bales of really nice hay that's what I'd go for.
Noone around with a round bale of nice barley straw, between feeding and bedding youd probably have it used either
 
I only have hay. No straw. I thought it would have a lot of molasses and be more palatable than hay and straw
Sure the addition of lucerne and molasses (and the other stuff in it) improves its value But it is still over priced. Buy a round bale of straw, bed them with it and let them eat as much of it as they can. They will eat plain straw.
 
Our calves are 12 weeks old now and have provided great entertainment for the kids all summer. We have them 8 weeks and in that time they have drank 1.5 bags of milk powder each. You can see it in them too. They have done well. We started them on crunch the day we got them. It was hard to get a quantity into them. Had them up to about half a kg each per day up to 2 weeks ago. Was short crunch one day so fed them on a 16% follow on nut which they go mad for. They are eating more than 1kg each per day and eating plenty of grass. I don't want to increase the amount of nuts too drastically so I'll keep edging it up bit by bit.

I'm down to the bottom half of the milk replacer bag and planning to change them from once a day feeding to every second day feeding just to wean them off it. Are they eating enough nuts to be weaned?
 
Our calves are 12 weeks old now and have provided great entertainment for the kids all summer. We have them 8 weeks and in that time they have drank 1.5 bags of milk powder each. You can see it in them too. They have done well. We started them on crunch the day we got them. It was hard to get a quantity into them. Had them up to about half a kg each per day up to 2 weeks ago. Was short crunch one day so fed them on a 16% follow on nut which they go mad for. They are eating more than 1kg each per day and eating plenty of grass. I don't want to increase the amount of nuts too drastically so I'll keep edging it up bit by bit.

I'm down to the bottom half of the milk replacer bag and planning to change them from once a day feeding to every second day feeding just to wean them off it. Are they eating enough nuts to be weaned?
Yea you can work away at that in my opinion, a lot of lads would give meal ad lib to calves that age but they'll do fine on what you're feeding them with plenty of grass in front of them
 
Yea you can work away at that in my opinion, a lot of lads would give meal ad lib to calves that age but they'll do fine on what you're feeding them with plenty of grass in front of them

I will push them to adlib, but I fear that they'd eat 2kg each per day if they got it - i'd prefer to build them up to it over a period of time.
 
Hi all i'm starting Dairy Farming next spring in County Meath. I will milk 50 high EBI jersey cross heifers. Average EBI is 187.
I am milking once a day, as I work fulltime.

I'm happy with everything apart from calving and calf rearing. All heifers are calving in 28 days.

I'll be using IBC's as calf hutches for small calves when born, then into group pens.

what is the max i should be keeping to a group and how many calf feeding troughs do I need.

I was going to buy 2 10 teat feeders and a few bottles for the very young.
Budget is tighter than a nut, so i don't want to be foolish.

Any tips on calving, i'm going to get a moocall as I live off farm.

How did it work out in the end?
 
Our calves are 12 weeks old now and have provided great entertainment for the kids all summer. We have them 8 weeks and in that time they have drank 1.5 bags of milk powder each. You can see it in them too. They have done well. We started them on crunch the day we got them. It was hard to get a quantity into them. Had them up to about half a kg each per day up to 2 weeks ago. Was short crunch one day so fed them on a 16% follow on nut which they go mad for. They are eating more than 1kg each per day and eating plenty of grass. I don't want to increase the amount of nuts too drastically so I'll keep edging it up bit by bit.

I'm down to the bottom half of the milk replacer bag and planning to change them from once a day feeding to every second day feeding just to wean them off it. Are they eating enough nuts to be weaned?

Is this the first time you have reared calves mucky. Is it something that you can you could do more of going forward and cut back on the sucklers
 
Is this the first time you have reared calves mucky. Is it something that you can you could do more of going forward and cut back on the sucklers

We milked cows up to when I was 12 and reared all of the calves. We kept on to the machine for 3 years after that and milked a few just to rear calves as we were building suckler numbers and then changed over to sucklers fully by 1996. I would have put a lot of time into the calves back then, but that's almost 30 years ago, so it took a bit of time to get my confidence back.

Home farm suits sucklers and I can't see us deviating too much from that. The wife's place is better land. We have some sucklers there at the moment - but I'm trying to phase that out and just fatten cattle there which would leave the workload lighter but that has to be done slowly as even though its in our name her father still likes to think that he knows best. I can see myself rearing more bucket calves next year. There are some small type fields in one part of the farm. To have a few quiet calves that will follow the bucket would be very beneficial. I'll see how it goes but based on this year, it has been a good success for us so far.
 
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