Get calves' feed exactly right

Give calves dry feed from two to three weeks. Milk alone isn’t enough, said this dairyman.

Poorly raised calves can go a long way to putting a dairyman out of business, because only strong, healthy calves make high-producing milkers, says Henry Vincent, a Jersey breeder in the Hazyview district of the Eastern Transvaal Lowveld [now Mpumalanga].

He says a calf is born with very small reserves of all the necessary nutritive substances except iron, and it has almost no resistance to diseases or other harmful conditions. From the start, the calf is completely dependent on its mother’s milk, not only for its immediate requirements but also for the rapid building up of reserves against any deficiencies that may arise.

The earliest age at which calves are able to digest dry food adequately is, experts say, probably determined by the nature of the ration and type of microbes that find their way into the fore-stomachs, but if calves are given dry food to nibble at the age of two to three weeks, they will start ruminating at three to four weeks.