Out Around the Barn

This year I have somehow got myself and my partner into all kinds of new adventures on the farm.  I have expanded my love of animals to acquiring chickens, goats and now bottle calves.  Chickens we have now had for about three years but the goats came ten months ago and the first bottle calves three months ago. 

What is so funny about all of this is that I didn’t plan to feed bottle calves.  We have not ever had them before and had no plans for them now.  As fate would have it, we had a heifer give birth and lost her calf.  We went to a dairy farm and bought a 2 day old bull calf and put on her.  We assumed she would take to the calf and all would be well.  Not so.  She pretty much lost her mind and became dangerous.  We had to let her go.  So now then, we have a calf with no mama and need to feed him.  So now we have a bottle calf, Buster. 

For two weeks I fed him a bottle morning and night and if I was at home during the day I would give him one at noon.  I am very naive at this point and not sure if I am giving enough or too much.  He develops the scours and I think I am giving too much so I decrease his intake and add some Pepto Bismol in his bottle, just a cap full.  This seemed to help but I had the feeling that he was still hungry all the time.  My partner, Allen, brought me some calf starter home and we started putting that out for him.  He would eat a little but not much.  He couldn’t seem to find the water on his own so, I would fill a bottle and get him to drink it that way.  I know he was confused but, so was I.  We were quite the pair. 

Around that two week mark, we had incident with someone elses cattle that left a calf without a mama and they didn’t want the calf.  So we thought that maybe Buster would do better with a friend and now we have Barney.  Now Buster is a Holstein and Barney is Angus,  the odd couple.  So, now my new adventure begins and it grows from here. 

Buster and Barney have become pets.  They know when it is feeding time and I have handled them enough that it is nothing to walk up to them, slip on a halter and lead them wherever I need them to go and there are the moments when a halter is not even needed. 

Barney took a few days to discover he would only get his milk from a bottle.  He was fortunate enough to have a mama for a couple of days and that was just enough to confuse him.  Once we got that process going we introduced him to the sweet feed and hay.  He took right to it.  Needless to say that he has grown and filled out a lot better that Buster. 

Now just when I thought my bottle days we coming to a close, we have 4 more calves that need a home.  These came in at the local livestock barn where Allen works and there are not many folks around here that want to mess with calves, too time consuming.  So, I got the call and said bring’em home.  Now we have Sally, Brutus, Brewster and Callie, all Angus babies, ranging from 1 – 2 weeks old.  Now the fun begins!

Not knowing their exact ages and going by size, I tried to figure out how much they would need to be fed.  Sally was the biggest of the four and Brutus was next, Brewster and Callie were the smallest, so to begin I gave each 2 quarts to see how well they would take the bottle.  It took about 4 days to get them to where we didn’t have to fight them to get them to eat.  Sally only took more than 2 qts. a couple of times and the others were just pigs once they got the hang of it.  The two smallest ate just about 3 qts. every feeding and Brutus ate just as much if you let him.  Sally just didn’t take to the bottle well and she usually finished after one bottle.  She did do well at eating grain and hay, though, and we had it in front of them always.  This I found also helped to keep them from sucking on each others ears since they have the urge to want to continue to suck after they finish their bottles.  At times I have to separate them for a few minutes and they do fine. 

This is when I realized that a good livestock feeder is an essential for bottle calves  and has to be at a height where they can reach it easily.  It needs to be accessible to them at all times and feed kept in them.  If you have several, a self feeder might be more to your liking.

Now we are at the 90 day age and it is time to think about weaning.  We are weaning our other calves that are the same age today and so I have decided that Barney, Sally and Brutus needs to be weaned from their bottles also.  Well, Barney has been for a while and I have kept him with the rest so, once in a while, if there is milk left that the others didn’t finish, he gets.  Now it is time for him to be completely off the bottle too.  I started decreasing Sally and Brutus’ milk intake a week ago so that it wouldn’t be so hard on them.  Today they have done well so far.  We will put them in with the other calves this evening and we will see how they do.

 Buster, on the other hand, gets to stay on the bottle a while longer with the little ones.  I think I messed up and didn’t give him enough to begin with and then took it away too soon.   He started looking thin and didn’t seem to eat the feed well so I started supplementing him with a bottle again.  I am going to do this for the next four weeks and see how he does.  By then the other two should be ready to wean and him along with them.  I recently read that you should give a bottle calf at least one to one and a half gallons of milk a day.  I wasn’t feeding Buster enough. 

After going through all this, I finally find an answer to my question of how much to feed.  Oh, well, it is a work in progress.

Having bottle babies can be fun but, it is work.  There is more to it than I first thought.  You have to have the right kind of bottle and nipples for them and you want the milk to come out at a nice flow, not too fast or it could choke them.  A livestock feeder that is at the right height and a good starter feed and grain, 15 – 18% protein, as well as hay is a must.  First and foremost is a good milk re-placer. This is a necessity.  You want to feed them on a schedule just like you would a newborn baby.  They need consistency as well, we feed ours at the same time we do chores and feed the other livestock, that keeps everything on a routine.  This lowers the risk of upsetting their stomachs and the possible scour.