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Vetomectin Day...

R

RSL

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Dec 19, 2008
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We vetomaxed our backgrounders today. Withdrawal done April 8th. We were too fast to get pictures of the actual operation, and I am still figuring out some camera settings on my new Pentax so they may be a bit dark.
Here are the calves 5 minutes after we were done.
vetomectina.jpg

vetomectinb.jpg

The Crew
vetomectinc.jpg

The facilities
vetomectind.jpg

and the calves a month ago (cows grazing in the back of the first pic)
calves08a.jpg

calves08b.jpg

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How much of that nice green hay turns into bedding? :shock: Nice calves. Looks like it may have been a chilly day.
 
It was a nice day. No gloves needed and flaps up on the hat.
As for the hay, about as much straw ends up as feed as hay ends up bedding :lol: We don't feed any grain and the hay is produced on a share arrangement. Our cost is pretty low on these calves. Next winter we think the project is to swath graze calves for as long as possible.

It seems a bit odd in our area where most guys are working everyday to feed, but the way we do things, we can feed calves for a week with 2 hours of tractor time and changing gates every couple of days. We fed 100 cows for two weeks today in 1/2 an hour.
 
Well I can understand that...don't have to get off the tractor to move hayrings. How does it go when you have to haul out all that "feed"....er....manure?
What I'm getting at is you may even feed those calves cheaper yet by investing in some bale ring/hay feeders gizmos.
 
We have had that debate numerous times. We think the next step at our place is some home built feeders and portable slabs and feeding out in the field. We think this will be set up like bale grazing, but being able to open the end of the feeder and slide it around the bales once a week or so (like a three sided rectangle with a gate on the 4th side).
Our challenge in Canada is that hay rings pull out mandatory RFID tags that take $, time and labour to replace. We have to bed anyway, so are cleaning out pens for calves at this point no matter what. The field feeding should solve all that for us.
Including time to AI, cows are corraled for 4 hours total every year, so there is no cleanup after the ladies, just calves.
 

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