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northeastern Ohio | If you are feeding raw milk from the bulk tank, you are probably ok.
But we have a small amount of waste milk that does not go into the milk tank that would otherwise go down the drain. I would not feed it to my calves without pasteurizing. The waste milk can be from fresh cows, cows with mastitis, high somatic cell cows with no mastitis, cows with broken blood vessel in the udder, ect. Bacteria counts tend to be high in this waste milk. There are several diseases that can be transmitted to the calf from raw milk (Johnes) plus there is evidence that calves fed raw mastitis milk have a higher incidence of mastitis when they freshen.
Pasteurizing this waste milk allows us to make use of a product that would otherwise only have fertilizer value. Normally we have to blend in good milk to have enough.
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Feeeding calves whole milk
