Calf to beef thread

Anyone in particular you recommend?

I got one last year off Irish camper goods, he has a 6L model for €160 it's the same as the ones advertised for calves only half the price. I got a 12L heater think it was around 200 it was good enough for 30 calves/90L per feed. Took roughly 5 mins to heat 90L to 36⁰

No need for a plumber, comes with garden hose connectors. I plumbed it in with 2 taps so as to leave it permanently connected and still have access to cold, but even that doesn't require a plumber just a few hand tight Philmac connectors.

Yep I've mine beside a tap and it's connected with garden hose fittings.

How long are people leaving calves on 18% ration? I have a batch of 20 calves bout 3 weeks weaned and I have almost emptied the bin of meal. I was going to change over to a 16% nut when I get the bin filled on Saturday or should I go with the same again?

What age are they. How much a ton are 16% and 18%

Thanks lads I'll get another bin of 18% this weekend. Most of the calves are coming up on 3 months old now, they're getting just over a kilo of ration morning and evening now along with silage and hay. Yeah I usually get bags of nuts to start off and mix with the ration for a week or two before fully changing over, easily upset them at that age.

Cattle stomachs work at 4O% DM. If feed is lower DM than that they need to expell the excess water. However in the process it heats to there body temperature 39C. Take the last few weeks temp have been as lower than -5 to about 10C. Now low DM silage will draw a lot of that low temperature into the bales.

An animal consuming 10kgDM @ 25%DM, must consume 40kgs of material

An animal consuming it at 40% DM must consume 25kg of material.

There is 15 kgs In the difference which h is 15 litres of water. But there is another factor an animal will drink a certain amount of water anyway to clear there airways and they need fresh water to purge some if there organs. So the 15 can become 25 and at 40DM it coukd be 10L.

However if the animal consumes 10kg DM at 60%DM it needs about 17kgs of material. The normal water it intake will be used to bring the stomach to 40% DM so this animal has only 6-7 litres of excess water to get rid of.

Recently was at a relatively of the better half place. He specialises in sh!te silage. Cutting it in July or even August trying for hay growing all year long. He ended up with haylage this year ( another 48 hours and he had hay). The cows are in the best condition I have seen for years. They starved on low DM silage two years ago. I had to get him to feed 2-3 kgs straight maize to keep them from dying before they calved and that only just worked.

I rinse mine out every morning and evening when I’m finished and I have no issues but they do be spotless from the first day I start,

I was plunging mine with disinfectant and calves were a bit hesitant to drink so just wash down with cold water now, seems to be working fine. My biggest issue was lack of straw last year and a breeze, have bought plenty straw and wind breakers

I wash them out after every feed, turn gas up to highest setting wash them with a garden hose spray head.

Lads, looked at the mart this week. The prices for calves were nuts. I know they will fall when the volume of animals hit the market in a couple of weeks but to what level do you think a lad will have to budget for them?

Whatever about paying to much for a good calf they have some hope of carrying weight & a decent grade to make a few pound. The worst thing anyone can do is pay to much for a bad calf as you still have the same feeding costs. Anything with jex breeding isn't worth rearing as they just wouldn't carry the weight to be profitable.

Could you put a few figures behind that calculation. I'd say 100 litres would get a calf from the mart to weaning. That's about 30 to 35 euro per calf. The only vaccination mine get is for blackleg.