Calves on pasture pic

[Up North]

We've always raised our dairy calves the traditional way in calf hutches. We fed milk replacer for most of our farming career. When that got to expensive we switched to actual real milk but we still bottle fed the calves in hutches. This spring we had a need to reduce our work load so we have decided to let the cows raise their own calves. It hasn't been without it's own new set of challenges but it has been working well so far. I certainly don't miss bottle feeding babies or cleaning hutches! So here's a pic of some of my Ayrshire babies. Heather

[Ronney]

Way to to go Heather - and aren't they looking good.

Way back in the dim dark ages when I first went dairying, all farmers reared their replacement on nurse cows. These were ususally slow milkers, poorer producers or cows prone to mastitis and each cow would have two, or maybe three, calves mothered on to her and then turned out to pasture to rear them for the next 5-6 months. When the calves were weaned the nurse cow would come back into the herd and usually produced better than her counterparts.

With the increasing cost of CMR, some dairy farms are going back to this method of rearing calves and finding that progress is not necessarily progress at all. Nurse cows are less labour intensive, more cost effective, rear a better, more robust calf, and still go on to produce a good quantity of milk for the rest of the season.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[topside1]

Heather/Mark, thanks for the great picture...Looks like spring has sprung in KS, sure is a good feeling...Great looking calves, your friend in TN,,,John

[Callieslamb]

I love Ayrshires! Yours are beautiful! I wish they were more common.

[gone-a-milkin]

Up North, so are you just leaving the calves with their real mothers, or are you grafting them to nurse cows like Ronnie was talking about?


Do you find that the calves favor one quarter over the rest and make the udders slightly lopsided? Do the calves come in the holdingpen with the cows during milking? Do you notice the calves to be nursing other cows (not their own mamas)?


Where I am milking, we have been leaving some of the calves with their dams this Spring too. Mainly because the weather has been really yucky. It has been much easier, though (like you said) it does have challenges.

[Up North]

We are leaving the calves with their real mothers. No grafting onto other cows.

Mammas will come into the parlor with one or two quarters milked out but I have not been having any milker slippage as a result. No udder problems so far. We have just started this 2 months ago so I guess I'll see if something will develop.

I chase all the calves up with the cows for every milking. Newborns will come into the holding pen but the older calves won't go in there. It takes them about 3 days to figure out they don't like being locked up.

For the most part calves suckle their mothers exclusively. I have noticed that the calves will nab a teat of anther mamma if her calf is drinking though. I do have one old cow that has adopted a calf that is not hers. That particular calf gets to nurse on 2 cows but so far none of the other cows that don't have a calf have done that.

Here have been my challenges.
1. Newborn calves need to be trained into the routine. That means getting the calf up and chasing her into the holding pen with mamma. Usually sometime in that 3 day training period I have to go off and retrieve a calf that has wondered off where I don't want her. I have noticed that this is getting easier with the more calves I have with the cows. The newborns are following the older trained in calves.
2. Takes longer to get cows into holding pen. This is because of a few different things. Calves decide to nurse because they figure out quickly that there is no milk after milking. Since cows have their calf they figure they don't need to go to the parlor anymore. Calves start frolicking and worry wort mothers chase after them.
3. Cows will not let down milk in parlor. So far this has only been a problem during the first few days. All my cows are letting down their milk now.

With the added challenges I still think it is much easier to deal with the calves this way. Chores are much shorter which is nice. Oh! and I forgot about another challenge. With the calves out on pasture I keep getting lots of phone calls from people looking for bull calves!

[gone-a-milkin]

Last week we had a neighbors 8! weaned angus calves come through the fence into the dairy herd. They were pretty wild beeves and scared. I had to laugh though, watching them all choose to follow a newborn holstien calf. The funniest game of follow the leader I have ever seen~ wobbly little one in the front (stopping to bellow for her mama every minute or 2) and bigger shaggy dogies trotting faithfully behind.
They did all find their way back out to the field after milking.