could a calf be allergic to milk replacer?

F.D

we have a calf at the moment very sick and not recovering bright as a button and thriving on arrival but now is scouring constantly like a greeny colour every time we take him off the milk replacer and put him onto lectade hes up and hungry again by the next feed, if we give him milk again its back to the same, yesterday we have took him to the vet and got an iv to rehydrate, and are giving him marcybel( i think) and natural yogurt last night, some more milk this morning and as soon as he got some this evening he's down again.
all i can put it down to is the Milk no other calves are sick
anyone else come across this?

blue5000

Ya it happens ok, is it whole milk powder you are using or cheapie palm oil stuff or fresh milk? If it is whole milk/whole milk powder you might try him on the milk substitute (palm oil based) powder, I'm not sure what the brand name of it is though.

F.D

blue5000 wrote: »

Ya it happens ok, is it whole milk powder you are using or cheapie palm oil stuff or fresh milk? If it is whole milk/whole milk powder you might try him on the milk substitute (palm oil based) powder, I'm not sure what the brand name of it is though.

We are using volac blossom easy mix, never heard of the palm oil based stuff i will look into it
If i could get real milk off a dairy farmer would that be worth a try? or would it be too rich for him now

5live

Reminds me of a few years ago when the calves went down with cryptosporidium. Fine and healthy when off milk but scouring within hours of going back on milk. But the other calves would start to have it now as well.

You could try making yogurt and dilute it down so its 50:50 yogurt replacer/water as it wont leave them as dehydrated and will give the stomach time to adjust and get the good bugs going. It worked for us anyway

F.D

thanks for the advice 5live just wondering can you mix natural yogurt with warm milk replacer or would that take the good out of it ?

5live

F.D wrote: »

thanks for the advice 5live just wondering can you mix natural yogurt with warm milk replacer or would that take the good out of it ?

Ideally you would want to mix it with warm milk replacer and keep it in the hot press overnight and use some of this for the following days milk. The heat gets the culture going well and makes better yogurt quicker than cold milk in a cold room.

Use a bucket with a cover though as divorce/being cut from the will by your mother can end up being more costly that losing a calf;)

F.D

Thanks 5live, the calf is on the mend now and getting the appitite back, we stopped using replacer and have gotten whole milk from my cousin, and made up a yogurt mix for him, i'm convinced it was the replacer that was causing the problem, its early days yet but fingers crossed, even seen him eating a little meal this morning
i know what you mean about the hot press and divorce

snowman707

we often take the lazy approach and get a the cheap natural actimel cartons in the supermarkets , one twice daily after milk for about 10 days

it goes back to a couple of years ago we had a calf scouring and not thriving (bvd was first thoughts) but blood showed -

we had tried everything and if she got any worse i was considering putting her down, one vet suggested natural actimel and in a few days i could see the difference and she went on to make a fully recovery