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After the calf is born it is immediately fed its mother’s milk. This is very important because unlike humans, calves get no immunity through the blood of their mothers. They get immunity to disease and bacteria from the milk of their mothers called colostrum. As time passes the calf’s body is able to absorb less and less colostrum so it needs to be fed immediately, with another feeding in 12 hours, for the calf to gain superior immunity. |
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After the cow calves she licks the baby clean. It is important to keep calving facilities clean so that the calf and mother are exposed to as little bacteria as possible. Here is a mother who had twins. |
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After the calves have been fed colostrum for the first several feedings they are moved into our calf feeding facility. They are housed in a pen with about 20 other calves. The system we use is a computerized feeding system. It automatically feeds the calves milk and grain. Inside of the building on the right sits...
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A computer can be seen on the desk. The computer is used to start calves on rations of milk and grain. It keeps track of what the calf drinks and more importantly, what it doesn’t. It also keeps track of when the calf starts eating grain and as the calf eats more grain it starts a weaning process off of milk. The computer knows each calf by the blue identification tag that she wears around her neck. The silver device in the middle of this picture is the milk feeder. In the top you put milk replacer and as a calf enters the feeder, it mixes up small amounts of milk for the calf to drink.
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