|
SW Ohio | We feed ours out. The guys who buys them wants them around 1400. This usually takes us 15 months on average.
A couple new tricks we started using within the last year, that seem to be helping calves to start on grain are:
1. give more milk than the typical 10-12oz per feeding. are goal is to double this (slowing to avoid scours, some we can't get to that amount), then knock them to once a day feedings. reasoning behind this is when they are eating more (milk, in this instance) then their bodies expect them to keep eating at that rate. they seem to thrive better, then when they are cut back to once a day, they are still looking for that amount of feed and eat a lot more grain (at least most of them do).
2. put small amount (half handful) of grain in milk bucket as they are sucking the last little bit off the bottom. they accidentally start eating grain, but then it becomes a habit. after they finish their milk, they look for their grain. also, we started doing this because another farmer who raises a few said that they are more likely to go back to their milk bucket and look for grain, rather than go to a separate bucket and look for grain there. so we have a milk/grain bucket and a water bucket for each calf.
we notice differences in these little changes in the way we start calves. and now that i have written this, the next calves we get in probably won't want anything to do with grain... :) | |
|
Dairy Calves
