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wcmn | I agree with the above for the most part. I raised calves for many years and quit recently due to back problems. I would not have quit as I had finally found a good dairy to get calves from. I had purchased many calves from the sale barns also over the years and most of the time there were more problems than not. In the last few years I drew blood on all the calves and check their IGG levels to see if they got colostrum. This helped a lot when come to treating the calf. I would treat a calf once if it did not get colostrum. When the calves were not worth much like a year ago I was told from a friend the works for the dairies as a heifer grower they were not giving the bulls any colostrum and just sending them to the sale barn as they did not want to spend any time on them.
The thing I found that worked the best to keep the calf healthy is feeding a good quality milk replacer that has 22% protein and 22% fat for the cold weather. I also found a product made by Calva in California that has Neo-Terra in it that I added to the milk replacer to keep the scours at bay. Since I started using this the problems went way down.
Good luck as calves are always a challenge. | |
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drop/bottle calves
