• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

What kind of hay to feed young calves?

Help Support Ranchers.net:

J

Jamber Ranch

Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2006
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
Location
North Dakota
We are trying to expand or ranch a little quicker by buying bottle calves and raising them up in addition to pairs we already have. The last couple of years we have fed ophan calves the same hay as we are feeding our cows which is a blend called "poundmaker" It has alot of big stem plants the calves don't seem to like and they eat around it and waste alot. I have been told that Timothy would be a good hay to plant for our young calves. Any outher suggestions?
 
Those little calves are more challenge than I am up to (in big #'s), but if it makes you some cash then who am I to argue.

I know that corn distillers grain is an awesome feed to supplement any bovines. It is palatable and great feed too. The smell brings them to it. I think timothy would be a good source of hay for roughage. I would be careful about bloat with alfalfa, but good leafy alfalfa is a great feed too. I also think grinding the hay would help you, but don't get it too fine with alfalfa, as all the fines can be picked up by choosy animals, and that can cause bloat. We fed calf creep mixed with COB to get our couple of bummed calves to get them on grain this year, then went straight to creep. Problem is having good quality hay for them in our area. We have none here close.
 
We've raised alot of dairy calves over the years. The best hay that we have used is a Crested/alfalfa / brome hay mix that is of high quality and not all stems. Along with that a good quality creep or a home mix of corn oats and a mineral protein mix.And always fresh water.
 
Along with that a good quality creep or a home mix of corn oats and a mineral protein mix.And always fresh water.
Click to expand...

This is the important part. If they've only been on milk and no grain, they can not digest the hay to it's full benefit.

http://www.das.psu.edu/dairynutrition/calves/rumen/
 
Stay away from Timothy. Its a waste of good land as it's nitrogen requirements are higher than almost any other grass out there, yet it yields no better. I feed my calves a blend of meadow brome and crested wheat grass, and they do very well. Once they hit about 600 lbs, they get switched to 1st cut alfalfa.

Rod
 
Try a complete feed with pelleted hay and you may even topdress it with milk replacer.


If you wait a few years, you'll be able to buy bred stock cows for not much more than wet babies cost right now. Those babies you work your butt off for right now will raise some cheap calves for several years.
 
you need the VFA's in the GRAIN to develop the papilli in the Rumen. Hay will not develop the Rumen like grain will. Toss out the old school term "scratch factor" for hay developing the Rumen, it's simply not true. In the younger calves the Abomasum is where most of your digestion is taking place while the VFA's are developing the Rumen. You're actually wasting money giving hay to dairy calves before they are weened. Get them eating grain early as possible, once they are eating an adequate amount remove the milk and start introducing forage.

We always run a few Holsteins, my Mom likes the pedigrees game. Dairy Management and Nutrition is what I focused on at Cornell.
 
Enjoyed your post, Ben H.

Dairy people really understand nutrition on a higher plane, because
they have to.

But I see some ranchers feed their replacement heifers real sorry, stemmy, mature hay that the calves just can't eat. IF they can't eat it, they don't do good.
Performance all begins with appetite. We winter our calves on Forage Pro (soybean, salt and mineral package with yeast culture) and hay. The hay is the best we have and we forage test it to know that it is. We choose nice, fine stemmed hay, grass/alfalfa mix; mostly grass.
I'm not saying they wouldn't do better with some grain, I know they would. But what they do, works for us and they grow out just fine.
In our situation, we have to hand feed them and since we are on our
sunset years, we just don't pack buckets of grain anymore.

The whole thing is about rumen function.
 
Thanks for all the advice! The hay will be used for calves from weening to around 400 pounds. I am looking for a smaller stem, longer leaf, softer hay that the calves can chew and digest eisier than the bigger stem hay we are feeding our cows. Thanks again for all the advice.
 
I have never used it personally but my neighbor weaned a bunch of his beef calves on foxtail millet hay a few years back... I think it iwas foxtail, might have been german. He game them choices of that and first cutting alfalfa/brome hay and they constantly chose the millet hay. It was the nicest looking, leafest "grass" hay that I have ever seen. Just gorgeus and smelled great.. All I worry about it is in real dry weather and nitrate accumulation.
 
IL Rancher said:
I have never used it personally but my neighbor weaned a bunch of his beef calves on foxtail millet hay a few years back... I think it iwas foxtail, might have been german. He game them choices of that and first cutting alfalfa/brome hay and they constantly chose the millet hay. It was the nicest looking, leafest "grass" hay that I have ever seen. Just gorgeus and smelled great.. All I worry about it is in real dry weather and nitrate accumulation.
Click to expand...
Millet sure needs to be put up right if it's going to be used for young calves. It can get real course quickly. I'd rather have second cutting orchard grass or timothy than brome personally. I like third or fourth cutting bermuda real well also. I bought some grassy alfalfa at Denver a few years back that was real fine alfalfa and orchard grass. It sure was pretty.
 
RR<

Pearl millet is very coarse but the density in which he planted this stuff (Foxtail, I am 95% sure) it was finner steamed than most any grass I have seen around here. Calves thrived on it.. It is not nearly as drought tolerant as the pearl however and I have real sandy soils in my annual fields. I would imagine if he let it grow to much it would have gotten coarser but it had started to head if I remember correctly. I had some that year too, we just strip grazed ours. Worked very, very well.
 
You guys are making me feel bad talking about second and third and fourth cuttings. We didn't even get much of a first cutting and nothing grown since. :cry2: :cowboy:
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
You guys are making me feel bad talking about second and third and fourth cuttings. We didn't even get much of a first cutting and nothing grown since. :cry2: :cowboy:
Click to expand...

Don't let those tears put out that cigarette. :wink: :)
 
I myself feed 2nd cutting orchard grass to my stocker calves and my bottle babys that we raise after they hit 100 lbs or so.It keeps them from getting loose but yet they grow really well on it. If i was feeding hay only i would do the same except a little more alfalfa in it as they get bigger. But that is here. And we are getting ready for our 3 cutting. SORRY Thats part of livin in this humidity it gets so humid it just rains.
 
Oh, that Orchard Grass is wonderful feed. So palatable too.
We grew it in Western Montana. It was our favorite, but we never
got more than one cutting. It did grow back good for grazing, with any
moisture at all.

We are looking into Dryland Orchard Grass to plant here.
 
Finally a subject I feel qualified to talk on and not fear someone will prove me wrong lol. Ok you might try and prove me wrong but I feel confident in what we are doing here so I'll just ignore it! We had 9 bottle babies and then 26 calves that milkcows raised. Really we are ranchers just some looking for some more money coming in.

For the bottle babies we fed them milk replacer two bottles a day morning and night. With that we offered them calf pellets from the local CO-Op and cracked corn. They got meadow hay consisting of brome grass, clover, and whatever else was in the hay. They also were offered alfalfa.

The milkcow calves were fed distillers and given alfalfa and brome grass hay.

Believe it or not but the bottle babies actually are nicer looking calves then those being raised on the cows. They are alot of work but roughly figuring each bottle baby has around 400 to 450 in them and at current market stand to be worth close to 800. Yes a lot of work but the extra calves are nice when you are stocked full yet are looking for alternatives to make more money. The milkcows calves will definatly have less in them and can be figrued at around 300 maybe 350 so that work of putting them on and taking them off twice a day will pay.


I strongly would recommend the calf replacer from Consolidated Nutrition we have the calves to prove the product works. The 4-H bottle calf that was born the middle of March weighs in at 380 pounds and still has time to grow.
 
CattleRme - Great response!!!

We have added the cost up several times and bottle calves seem to win out everytime. The sale price when we bought or sold may change both ways but the raising cost has stayed about the same. You can buy a 70-80lb bottle calf for $200 or less. Several calves she has bought for $50 to $75 if you buy when nobody else wants to buy them or when the ranchers are done buying replacement calves. From the day you bring them home until they are ready to go back to market we spend an average of $143 on each calf. 35 days of milk replacer, 90 days of calf starter and 120 days of pellets, vacinations and the combination of electrolyte, antibotics, etc. This does not count hay cost, but I can feed a herd of bottle calves for the price to feed hay to one lactating cow. They go to sale at around 450-500#. We average $585 a calf at sale. So that is $585 minus $343 for a profit of $242 a calf. We have had as many as 50 bottle calves at one time and we try, I repeat try to do this for both spring and fall calving, carrying less calves during the winter because of hay issues. Now I am not sure but I don't think you can make too much better a return on your investment anywhere (legally anyway). My wife has the art of caring for these little guys down to a science. She gets done in a little over an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. The check at the end is well worth the two hours a day.
 
Jamber Ranch, are you feeding any hay prior to weaning? Are you feeding "old school" quantities of milk replacer or are you shooting towards an "accelerated heifer growth" program?

Just curious, one of my professors, Mike VanAmburgh, at Cornell has done a ton of research on accelerated growth. The bottom line is that you get higher daily gains, higher daily gains allow you to breed sooner and therefore get into production sooner. You spend more per day in feed costs but have a lower overall feed cost prior to calving.
 
Thanks for the info Ben H.

We feed a regular feeding which is 8 ozs of replacer to 1 pint of water. You could could 10 oz of replacer to the same amount of water but it seemed to scour them. Maybe they just weren't used to it but we didn't take the chance of continuing to feed 10 oz. We also thought of diluting the 10oz replacer and feeding three times a day but our vet talked us out of it.

No hay is offered to the calves until they are completely weaned which we do when they eat 2 pounds of calf starter for about 7 days straight. We do the weaning in about 5 days, one feeding of milk a day. Most take to it with a little bawling but some just don't do well the first time so we try to wean them again in another week.

Just curious, how many days did your professor talk about leaving them on milk? What is difference in what he was doing compared to what we do? We have talked several of times about adding 15 days more before we wean which would bring them to around 52 days from the time we bring them in. The first feeding the evening we get them home is straight electrolyte and the next two feedings are half electrolyte and half milk.

We by far, do not always look for the cheapest way to grow these calves because it seems like any money we add to these bottle calves have paid dividends in the end. We are at the sale every week and have the biggest buyers in the region asking us when our calves will be ready. They know by now that we break our backs trying to find better ways to get them the product they want. I love nothing more than to watch a group of these million dollar buyers duking it out for our calves.
 

Latest posts

Top