The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service's 4-H youth development program teaches children how to feed both beef and dairy calves. Both cattle types are fed in the same way. The only difference in feeding, expressly noted by University of Kentucky researchers, is that beef calves should not be fed milk or colostrum containing antibiotics. Challenges to feeding beef calves are the same as those of dairy calves. Challenges include training them to express nipple bottles, eat from open pails and wean from milk consumption.
Feeding beef and dairy calves
Follow these steps to bottle feed calves:
- House the calf individually away from other calves and older cows to prevent the spread of disease and a fight for food.
- Clean the teats of the mother cow or dam. Milk colostrum from the dam. According to the University of Kentucky, colostrum builds calves' immunity against disease and decreases incidences of diarrhea.
- Make sure colostrum is thick, creamy and free of blood.
- Hand feed three quarts of colostrum to a newborn calf within an hour of birth from a nipple bottle. University of Kentucky researchers explain that calves allowed to nurse do not express enough colostrum to prevent disease.
- Repeat Step 2 and feed the calf in this way every three to four hours. Maintain this feeding schedule until a calf is two or three weeks old. You may change the milk type after a calf is four days old.
- Feed a calf whole milk, reconstituted milk replacer, waste milk, fresh or fermented colostrum from four to 30 days of age. Give Holstein or brown Swiss calves from four to five quarts per day. Give smaller breeds from three to four quarts per day.
- Help the rumen stomach develop starting at four days of age. The University of Kentucky recommends a calf starter that includes a coccidiostat or coccidioside supplement, oats, molasses, cracked corn, limestone, soybean meal, white salt and dicalcium phosphate.
- Put six ounces of feed in a pail and let the calf nibble from four to 14 days of age every four hours. Give it water in a separate container at the same time to increase feed consumption.
- Increase feed gradually in six ounce increments as the calf becomes accustomed to it.
- Feed the calf every eight hours at two or three weeks of age. When it eats two pounds of feed, three days in a row, wean the calf from milk.
- Add early cut alfalfa or grass hay to grain feed when a calf is two to three months old. At this age, adjust the calf to group feeding in small groups of four to six.
Sources
University of Kentucky: Donald Amaral-Phillips, Patty Scharko, John Johns and Sharon Franklin: Feeding and Managing Baby Calves from Birth to 3 Months of Age
University of Arizona College of Agriculture: Stephen J. Campbell: Hand Feeding Young Calves
Oklahoma State University: Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service: 4-H Youth Development: Feeding a Bucket Calf
Sarah McLeod - Sarah McLeod began writing professionally for the federal government In 1999. In 2002, she was trained by Georgetown University's Oncology ...
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