[highhorse]

hi

has anyone done calf rearing (very young calves) on a larger scale (100 plus) and if so what was your experience and was it profitable?

on a smaller scale, say 50, is it pofitable?

what age did you folks buy them in and how much for, how long did you keep them and how much did you sell them for?

to be honest, any advice, experience, thoughts would be much appreciated!

thanks x

[SallyintNorth]

No I haven't done it on that sort of a scale.

We have a 30+ cow suckler herd, and raise maybe up to 10 additional calves per year, on top of the 30 or so that are born here which suckle their own mothers.

Until I had my Jerseys we reared the bought-in calves on the bucket.  Now I multiple suckle on the Jerseys.

My immediate comment on doing it large scale would be that managing disease would be the biggest challenge.  Dairy farms that rear their own often keep the calves in tiny single pens for the first month to try to stop them infecting each other

I'll be interested to see if anyone else has any experience to share - if the infection problem can be managed then there has to be potential for making a reasonable return, I would think, once the setup costs in terms of sheds, pens, muck midden, etc., were taken care of.

[highhorse]

hi sallynorth

thanks for replying. do you make much profit the way you do it? where do you buy from , at wht age and when do you sell and ho much o you get ( if you dont mind me asking).

basically i am taking on a large barn and 20 acres and want to run a smallholding that pays for itself. ive got plenty of past experience with animals but havent run livestock (apart from horses) as a business before.

iv been doing a wee bit of research and its seems to be saying that when you have a larger group of calves they are better penned in groups of 10 and that ventilation is key to their health?

thanks for any advice   

[Rosemary]

Try and get on to some dairy farms that raise their own and see how they do it and how successful they are.

About 100 years ago, I worked for a farmer who bought in batches of 40 calves every eight weeks. We fed them warm milk twice a day, a bit of coarse mix and straw. Individual pens. Once they were eating enough bagged feed, we weaned them. Just stopped feeding them milk. Ususally about six / seven weeks; then out steam cleaned the barn, disinfected and ready for the next batch. Good hygiene and attention to detail is essential plus a good source of healthy calves that have had adequate colostrum. These were mainly Hereford x Friesian heifers aimed at the suckler cow herd then.

Systems change though - the dairy farm I worked on had a machine that fed warm milk ad lib and the calves were batch housed. Much harder to manage with calves of different ages and harder to spot any that weren't 100%.

The technology's improved since then though and feeders are much more sophisticated. THeories on what's best keep changing - but I reckon good hygiene, good stockmanship and good calves never go out of fashion.

It's always a balance between time and capital, I think.

[trish.farm]

We have some good friends who have a huge dairy.  The calf rearing side of it is amazing.  The calves are all penned by age in groups of 5, adlib barley straw to eat, they use reject milk from the dairy to feed them which cuts their cost enormously, then introduction to cake at about 3 weeks.  They are housed down both sides of a barn which is open at both ends and slatted from 8 foot high down the sides, loads of ventilation is so important.  As the calves get older and off milk they move over to the other side of the barn and are housed in groups of 15.  Water is fed on the outside of the pens to avoid contamination in the drinking water.  As calves are moved up into older pens, the empty pen is scrubbed meticulously before next batch of youngsters come in.  As they are all their own calves they have no worries about importing diseases.  Very impressive set up with cracking calves!! 

[SallyintNorth]

Try and get on to some dairy farms that raise their own and see how they do it and how successful they are.

Top advice 

And you may find that the dairy farm rear their own replacement heifers but are happy to sell their beef crossbreed calves - and those are the sort you want to be buying.

When we were bucket rearing we never bought anything younger than 1 month old; this massively reduced the death rate. 

Go to your local auction's calf sale a few times; you'll soon see how the prices work.  At Carlisle, a good Limousin x or British Blue x will be £300-£400 at a month old.  If you can rear all that you buy there should be room for a profit there, but at those prices you don't need to lose very many to see your profit eroding.  A nice Hereford x  will be high £200s, so quite a bit cheaper.  And a nice Angus x could be a little less. 

It's much better to buy from one source and not through a ring, but watching the trade will give you a feel for what they're worth and also start to give you an eye for what's good and what's less good.  When buying dairy crosses, you want to learn how to spot the Holstein backend and avoid them

As a very rough rule of thumb, with prices as they are at the moment, you would hope to add about £300-£400 per head per annum.

Again, spend time at your local mart watching the store trade.  You will learn what sort of beast fetches what sort of price at what sort of age.  If you have more than one mart within 30 miles, visit them all - the buyers at different marts could be looking for different things .

One of the things I get for free is BH's lifetime's experience of knowing when to sell which beast and at which mart and which sale.  I would think that judgement probably adds about £80-£100 / head / annum to our profit, if not more.