Get a good bleeding cow

Serum from the blood of a highly immune cow is the best thing for healthy calves, said a large-scale dairy farmer.

You need a healthy cow that has lived on the farm for many years and has built up a strong immunity to all of the diseases that may be present. You need a cow that has been dosed more regularly than any other on the farm so her blood is simply loaded with antibodies. You need a good bleeding cow for healthy calves.

Every few weeks you take a few litres of her blood, have it centrifuged at a veterinary laboratory, and feed a few millilitres of the serum to the calves. As if by magic, you have robust, healthy calves without having to use a complicated dosing programme.

So says Pieter Pretorius of Rooikraal Estate at Heidelberg in the Transvaal [now Gauteng]. He milks an average of 900 cows a day, which means he handles a lot of calves and has been forced to find the simplest and most effective way of safeguarding his future milkers.

When calves are born, they are taken from their dams and placed into small pens. These form either an indoor battery system or a newer system of small crates outdoors.

Within a few hours of birth they are dosed with the serum by having a 10ml syringeful sprayed into their mouths. For the first three days they are fed milk from their own dams (cows that have given birth are housed in special stalls to make sure their milk goes to their own offspring).