Raising Bottle Calves

Our newest adventure has been raising some bottle calves. I really enjoy it and I have learned alot so far. I started with 5 calves that I bought from a guy that goes up to northern Indiana and gets a trailer load of them. There are some big dairy's in northern Indiana. The cows have to be bred to produce milk but the dairy's do not what the calf that is the result of that, so they sell them. The problem is that they don't care how young the calf is when its sold or if it even had its first drink of colostrum from its mamma. Its horrible! I cannot sugar coat this story. This is the truth about what happens to these calves born and trucked out of the dairy's. The guy tells me "if you buy 10 calves only expect 6 of them to live". Expect to lose just about half of them? Really?!  He was not kidding.  This new adventure of ours is not exactly what I expected.

 

The calves were very young when they arrived. Just a few days old if that.  The next day it was obvious they were all sick. They get what is called "scours". Their gut is very sensitive to bacteria , viruses, and changes in their environment. The scours is very bad watery diarrhea that will quickly dehydrate a new calf and he will die very fast if not given electrolytes early on. The other thing they had was "shipping fever" which is pneumonia they get from traveling. It was alot of work taking care of these sick calves. Some of them would not eat or drink the electrolytes. We had to drench them (stick a plastic tube down their throat that is attached to what looks like an IV bag and pour the milk or electrolytes in it. Despite our heroic efforts we lost 3 out of  the 5 calves. The guy replaced 2 of them for me because they were sick to begin with. Now I have 4 calves that have made it through the initial illness and are doing pretty good at the moment.

morning breakfast

this one is very loud and very big

this one has a strange bite and his bottom teeth stick out all the time

 

 

This one did very well. He didn't get sick and he can drink that half gallon bottle in under a minute!

So anyway, raising these calves has not been easy. I have learned some things along the way. Here is my advise to any of you thinking about doing this.

1. Have electrolytes on hand before you buy the calves. Get the electrolytes that is also a nutritional supplement. I would even give them a bottle of it when you get the calves until you know what you are dealing with health wise for them. get a calf drencher too! you might need it!

2. make sure you buy a milk replacer that is milk based, not plant based. buy one that has medication in it.  Good  milk replacer is a must and should cost you about $70 a 50 pound bag.

3. I would arrange to have a vet out the day the calves come in. The medication you buy at the feed store for scours and pneumonia (like we did), does nothing for them. Its totally worth it just to pay the vet bill to have some good antibiotics pumped in them to start with. Might save you more money in the long run. 

4. separate the calves into their own stalls or pens. when one gets sick it will spread like wildfire. 

5. This one is very important! when you are dealing with sick calves wear coveralls and rubber boots and  leave them at the barn.When you get back to the house wash your hands like you are scrubbing for surgery.

The parasite that causes scours is transferable to humans. Its called Cryptosporidium. If you have never been exposed to this before you will most likely get it. New employees on dairy farms get it and are out for 10 days. Its expected! We got it! My husband didn't get it because he was immune from already having it as a kid when he raised calves.  Its a 2 week illness. The symptoms are frequent watery diarrhea (sound familiar?), low grade fever, stomach cramps, nausea, headache. This was the worst illness I have ever had. Not to be gross or anything but the watery diarrhea was bad I could not keep up with the Gatorade and I dehydrated and had to go the ER and receive 2 bags of IV fluids. I lost 10 pounds in a week. Can't really complain about that.  My daughter fortunately did not get it as bad as I did. Children are pretty resilient. Now we are all well and immune to Crytosporium.  Yay. So the adventure continues and I have a few new grey hairs from the last one.