Feeding Dairy Calves (30)
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- This week, we're showing how we feed calves here on our dairy farm.
If you have any questions about this week's video, leave them in the comments, and I will post a Q&A video on Sunday if needed. Thanks for watching!
e-mail: pietvanbedaf@hotmail.com
Facebook: / vanbedafdairy
#pietvanbedaf
#dairyfarmer
Dairy calves feeding is very complicated. Thank you for sharing 🐄
We store our calf feed in bulk, which has a fair bit of molasses in it. The bottom of the bin is something you can just slide open with your hands and we drop it into a five gallon bucket which we then use to give to the calves in hutches. Love the content, it's always cool to see how another farmer does something different!
Do you ever have issues with the calf feed getting stuck or frozen in the bin? We'd like to store our calf feed in a bin and receive it in bulk, but I'm worried it won't come out of the bin.
Noisy calves are healthy calves
Impressive!
Very informative. Thank you. Did you guys get hit with snow, they were calling for
Yes, we had a good amount of wind and snow last night. It looks like we're going to get some more tonight.
Its nice seeing close up how your guys mix the 'milkpowder' and handle the noisy hungry 'babies ' . We know they not camera stars like you , ( lol ) but show us more of the guys handling all cows .
How is the weather today? We are about 150 miles west of you. Its not good! Stay safe! Take Care!
It was pretty bad yesterday afternoon until this morning! It's not as windy now but it looks like the snow and wind pick up again tonight.
Hi Piet. I thought let me look up what a average milking cow in the Netherlands eats. And this is what i did find.
55 kilos of roughage consisting of
75% grass
25% corn silage
5 kilos of concentrate consisting of
25% corn
15% soy
10% citrus
10% palm kernel
10% rapeseed
5% beets
5% wheat
100 grams of vitamins and minerals
That's fairly similar to our rations for our milking cows, mainly forages with a mix of concentrates.
Love the calf barn. How do you clean those pens out with the trough in front of them?
When we move calves out of the barn we pull the dividers out and can come in from the side with a skid steer.
We used to feed pail’s we had to many sucking on each other when they got older switched to bottles and almost eliminated that problem we cut our feeding time in half got a bottle washer and a bottle filler much easier to train calves with bottles
I've looked into doing the same thing, maybe in the future!
Hello Piet how do you address the issue of Diarrhoea and pneumonia in calves?
-dairy farmer from Greece
For diarrhea we'll give calves electrolytes in-between milk feedings. If it's a more serious case they will get a probiotic and kaolin pectin. If our calves have diarrhea it's usually viral not bacterial so antibiotics aren't used often. We don't typically have pneumonia but sometimes the calves will develop pneumonia if they're dealing with a more serious diarrhea case. If we do have a calf with respiratory issues we'll use draxxin or baytril.
How do the calves grow muscle wise with no area to walk, play, run be a calf?
We feel that Individual pens gives the calves the best environment to thrive early on when they don't have their immune system built up yet. It also allows us to see how each calf is doing individually as far as eating and drinking. Once the calves are around 70 days old they will go into group housing with 4 calves together and at 80 days old they will go into a group of 20.
Piet, it was very informative. I took notes. But i got confused about milk balancer. Why do you need milk balancer? and who do you feed milk balancer? Later you called it milk replacer too.
We feed pasteurized milk together with milk balancer to our older calves receiving milk because it allows us to feed a higher rate of solids to those calves. By increasing the solids in the milk fed to those calves they grow better. Milk balancer is very similar to milk replacer, it is milk replacer designed to be mixed together with milk.
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 Old calf means from what age to what age?
@@bhoola123 they get milk only up to 25 days old and then milk plus balancer from 25 days old until they're weaned at 60 days old.
Hi Piet, would it be a good idea to separate a calf from the herd if it has a naval infection?
It would help, it would prevent other calves from licking the infection.
These calf boxes are also from the brand Calf Tel ?
The plastic dividers in our calf barn are from farmtek.
Do you raise your beef calves and bull calves?
We raise a few beef calves, but the majority are sold as calves.
In the barn and In the hutches on average how many calves in total at any given time?
Roughly 180 calves 0 to 3 months old.
Why do you give them pasteurized as opposed to unpasteurized?
Calves are more susceptible to disease because their immune system is still developing especially in the first 2 to 3 weeks of their life. Pasteurizing kills any pathogens that could be in the milk that the calfs immune system isn't prepared for.
What is your cost of raising a heifer to calving age??
Around $1450.
Hi I am working on a dairy farm in saudi arabia I am from Pakistan Want to come to you
artificial examination and treatment calves Treatment cip I know how to prepare and feed milk
Why not use cow milk ?
We use our cow's milk for our younger calves and our cow's milk mixed with milk balancer for our older calves. We use the balancer to increase the solids in the milk fed to our older calves to better meet their nutritional needs.
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 So I assume it is more profitable for you to sell the cows milk rather than feed it to the calves, right? For the first couple of days after calving a cows milk is not fit for human consumption so that milk is fed to the calves, is that right?
@@dhenschel4 the main reason we use the balancer is to feed a more nutrient dense milk to our older calves. We'll save the colostrum from each cow and the second and third milking is used to feed our calves.
That's mean just keeping them like that they need to be with there mother!!:( poor babies!
Our calves are very well cared for. We raise them in a manner that maximizes their heath, comfort and nutritional needs.
He talks like he doesn't know what the hell is going on! Should have let the workers that actually do it everyday narrate?????
Thanks for the input. Was there something in particular you'd like me to elaborate on?