Also read the article on this site called "Diarrhoea in Hand Raised Calves".

Our beef market is still strong, thanks to our overseas quarantine and the occasional media hype of mad cow disease which we don't appear to have here.

Calves in a shed or penned situation are a refugee camp of new born babies in stress. If the conditions aren't perfect then heavy losses and suffering will occur. I guarantee failure, disease, poor growth, domestic arguments and many many lost $ if you don't follow this advice or similar.

Calf raising has usually been done by the woman of the home or farm and I still think that works best. There are exceptions of course. Two of the best calf rearers I've ever seen are men...but the woman thing generally is true and the reasons are obvious...mothering instinct, patience, cleanliness, compassion and so on. 


Rule number one in all livestock raising enterprises (however small) is to plan and prepare. That includes reading, talking to others or a vet that has been in livestock and seen all the problems too many times, choosing a dry and draining site for raising them, fencing fully first and at the very last...carefully buying stock. Never go out and buy your stock and then work out how you are going to raise them, fence them or house them. That includes your fowls, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs and even your kids too. 

Your animal housing doesn't have to be expensive and can even be ridiculously cheap...see later. BUT hygeine, warmth with ventilation and comfort are the keys.

If you can, it is best to buy calves that have come direct from a well run dairy farm where you know that they have had at least their first two days on the mother and are known to have strongly suckled her life-saving first milk. Some farmers "snatch" calves from mothers at birth and stomach tube them with a dose of colostrum from the colostrum vat. That might be OK if they stay on bulk colostrum but often the bulk storage of colostrum contains milk from cows that have had weaker stuff added also. That is because it's not only containing the first "beastings" (new colostrum) but also the rest of all the other cows' first few days of milk go into it too. Dairy farmers cannot send off the first few days of a cow's lactation to the factory so it is commonly used to raise calves. Therefore calves fed colostrum from this bulk source soon after birth may not get enough of the good strong stuff because it gets progressively weaker in antibodies after each milking, approximately halving in strength each time the cow is milked. 
It is also not a lot of use giving a calf colostrum after about 12 hours of age and expecting it to be as effective. The protective antibodies in the colostrum are not absorbed by the calves gut after about 12 hours of age and are therefore not life protective. Sure it's excellent food but not so protective. If you are able to raise your calves on whole milk or bulked colostrum they certainly will do better than on milk powder, but care and detail may make it very little different which you use.

If you buy calves from the saleyard you run a very high risk of them "crashing" a few days after purchase because they have been yarded, trucked, cold, exposed to disease and faeces from all over the state, stressed and you have no idea of their colostrum status. However there are precautions that will help overcome that. See later.

If no colostrum (or not enough)is absorbed in the first few hours of life in most of our domestic animals it is a certain death sentence unless detailed extra precautions are taken.

When you bring calves home to raise keep remembering that you have just taken charge of a group of newborn babies and have put them in severe stress and into a very un-natural disease promoting state. This state of stress persists for several days during which they are in danger. If they do well and don't get diarrhoea or pneumonia for the first three weeks... well, you will probably succeed with that batch.

Calves on a cow feed about every hour or less. We assume you won't be doing this but probably three times a day for seven days then twice for a month then only once as you commence weaning. Weaning can commence as early as a month if you have very good food to change to. I used to put the weaner food (crumbles) in the bottom of the bucket that I fed from. Today most feed from teats attached to a multi feeder so you can't do that. Which reminds me... the modern teats are valves which need detailed cleaning after each feed. 

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