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Manitoba | Calves will do much better on pasteurized whole milk vs replacer and going to pasteurized colostrum again a big step up. (for us particularly when compared to the powdered colostrum products, we used those and had poor performance, when to pateurized colostrum and WOW, huge improvement in calf health) Also we feed any and all unsaleable milk we have.
This will address all disease concerns (for us the big one was / is johnes)
Depending on size you need for pasteurizer though it will be tough to go much lower than $10 000. Dairy equip is stupid expensive! Our 40 gallon batch model, westward / dari tech was over 10 000. There are some smaller ones but even those were at least 8000 + when we bought ours a few years ago. Maybe some now lower cost but then I could not find any lower.
If going the raw milk way without pasteurizing I would suggest to you to look at feeding acidified milk. (we pasteurize and acidify) That may address some of the disease issues. Research I have read about (although I don't think this has been published yet by those doing the studies) is the acidification will kill all the bugs your worried about is held for 48 hours prior to feeding. And then take it one step further and go with a self feeding system. Not the fancy pricey computerized version. The calf is plenty intelligent to feed itself, it's the employee feeding the calf that struggles with intellectual capacity.
works well for us.
Edited by Oakwood 10/17/2011 20:25
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Raw milk for dairy heifer calves?
