One-cow Family Meets the One-family Cow
(Page 9 of 14)
May/June 1972
By Hank Rate
THE NEW BABY
RELATED CONTENT
You may want to treat the new calf's navel stub with iodine before leaving him with his mother to give him some time to get on his feet and fill his belly. The cow will give very little milk for the first twelve hours and it doesn't hurt to leave her with the new arrival for that period of time. Once you take the calf away, though, never let it suck its mother again. Some cows can and will hold most or all of their milk for the baby . . . which will frustrate you and cause the calf to scour. (See the pen arrangement diagram for an idea of how to handle this problem.)
FEEDING THE CALF
The "first milk" is not really milk at all but colostrum, a nutrient that contains powerful natural antibiotics. It's a necessity for freshborn calves (and is also fine for hogs or chickens) but undesirable for humans. Give Bossy's baby only 1 1/2 quarts from each of the first six milkings (three days) and discard the rest.
You'll go through a lot of patience and spilled milk the first couple of go-rounds, but the calf will quickly learn to drink from a bucket (lead it in by letting it suck your milk-wet fingers) or from a nipple on a nursing pail. After a few (extremely) frustrating, head butting, milk splashing feedings . . . you'll be in business.
I've seldom raised a bucket calf that hasn't developed a mild case of "milk scours" during its first month. Signs are droopy ears, loss of appetite and violent, foul-smelling diarrhea with a stool that is light brown in color. (Similar symptoms, but with white and/or bloody foaming stools could indicate infectious scours and require immediate veterinary care. Infectious scours, however, should be rare in a family cow operation.)
Milk scours are not serious when treated quickly. Your baby's stomach is just upset or he's somehow sneaked in and sucked the cow or you've increased his milk ration too fast. Slack off on the milk and give him a tablespoon of a good scour medicine at each feeding until he straightens out. The calf's appetite should be back in a day or two.
Commercial dairymen waste none of their cows' precious milk after the colostrum is gone, but feed their baby calves a powdered "milk replacer" for the first several months. I give Old Yeller's children whole milk, and slowly increase their ration from 1 1/2 to 3 quarts morning and night. After a month I start putting water, hay and grain in front of each calf andby the time the youngsters are 45 to 60 days old-the individual babies supplement their milk with solid feed and grow like lil·e weeds.
As soon as a calf begins to eat hay and grain steadily I a generally switch part of his ration from whole to skim milk. At the same time, the baby is dehorned, vaccinated for blackleg and malignant edema (10¢ for a do-it-yourself combination vaccine) and—if male—castrated. He should be vaccinated again for BLME at six months of age.
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