warning

[dieselfreak]

Right now I have three holstein bull calves that I have been feeding milk replacer for about a month. My bosses dont have any calves at the moment so they gave me their bad milk that they cant put in the bulk tank to feed to our pigs and calves, and after two feedings of the real milk two of the calves got a HUGE case of scours. It cleared up after a few days of electrolytes, but it really had us worried. Just a warning, dont switch your bottle calves over from milk replacer to milk without doing it slowly!

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

DON'T switch any ruminant from any kind of feed to another without doing it slowly. Heck don't change any animals feed quickly - you do so at your peril and your Vets profit. This is Animal 101.

[JeffNY]

Changing the type of feed quickly isn't good, changing a feed type program doesn't seem to make a big difference. What I mean is, say you feed grass hay (baled) in the barn in the evening, and morning. Haylage outside during the day, then go to haylage in the barn, hay outside. That doesn't effect them, but a switch from say no haylage to bam, haylage (saying they never had it), isn't good. Calves are extremely sensative to this, and going from the "fake" stuff (replacer isn't even close to the real thing), to the real BF/Protein stuff will give you some problems in the form of the runs. The key to switching it from replacer to milk is do a slow transition. For example, 1/4 bottle milk, 3/4 bottle replacer (different bottles), then slowly up it to 50/50, then 3/4 milk, 1/4 replacer and so on. I plan on feeding this bull calf we have now Jersey milk, I will slowly transition him to it, untill his system is used to it. I noticed with our beef animals, the one who has Jersey in her backround, that her calves grow like weeds. The other beefers grow, but nothing like her calves. Also had a calf in December from "Amber", and was feeding the calf the Jersey milk, it was growing really nice. So the real stuff is big boost. Not everyone does it, but I know of a lady who has done it for years, and sees good results (healthier too).


Jeff