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Ryan, IA | When i bottle fed calves in the calf huts, I would have them weened from the bottle by 4 weeks, milk replacer by 6 weeks. It was so much more work filling bottles, running around checking holders for which was done first, and having to monitor which were "playing" with the nipple or actually drinking the milk replacer.
One trick we used to get them to drink was an old nipple that had the end cut off so it was an open hole and then hold it down in the milk. We started with just letting them suck on your fingers, but they you had to be there the whole time. If you put the nipple in, you can remove your hand, walk away and they may keep on sucking on the nipple. If they would fail to keep it in their mouth, it may have tipped on a side and they would still play with it and continue to drink. Sometimes they would pick their head out of the pail and loose the nipple in the feed or on the bedding. You may have to get back to them and pull their nose in the milk replacer again. It usually didn't take but three days to get them feeding out of the bucket-if they were healthy. | |
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Weaning a bottle calf.
