The Ultimate Guide To Feeding Bottle Calves

You may have heard about feeding bottle calves before, but did you know there was more to it than just giving them milk? Find out what else you should be doing and how long you should be doing it!

It was a lot of fun to watch them drink and see how excited they would be to see you when you had that bottle of milk in your hands.

STEP 1: FIND A REPUTABLE FARMER TO SOURCE THE CALVES

Some farmers will take the newborn calf immediately from its mother and put it in a pen with no regards to its health or future. This is very rare but still happens.

The calf must have at least three feedings of colostrum in the first 24 hours of life. This is the milk that is produced by the mother immediately after the calf is born.

STEP 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF MILK REPLACER

This is a feeding that you will do twice a day roughly twelve hours apart. You can purchase the milk replacer at any feed or implement store.

Be sure that it is not a soy based milk replacer. This has no place in the life of a bottle calf. The odds of the calf living are already relatively low and it needs every chance you can give it to survive.

STEP 3: FEEDING BOTTLE CALVES HOMEMADE YOGURT

All calves are prone to a condition called scours, where basically bacteria in their stomach causes the calves to have diarrhea until they dehydrate and die.

I went to the internet and searched and came across several university studies where they found that yogurt fed to calves greatly reduced the level of bacteria that causes scours.

I can’t say that the yogurt is the reason why they were so healthy but again, anything I can do to increase their odds is always a good thing. If you have some homemade yogurt in the fridge I encourage you to throw it in, it definitely won’t hurt.

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