The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Cattle => Topic started by: Jackie 2 on February 15, 2013, 06:14:01 am
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I'm thinking of buying some very young calves from local farms/knackerman, bucket feeding them (2 to start with) then out to grass and slaughter at 6 months. Rose veal.
Ill buy in male calves.
Is this a viable option do you think?
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Would they be intended for private sale/boxes or do you have an outlet for the meat? Only wondering as apart from rib roast and escalopes I wouldnt know what to do with all the other cuts from a veal animal.
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Its for me really but excess will be sold
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I have a sausage machine ;)
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i used to buy rose veal mince at melton the stall in question seemed to sell it easy enough.
the downside with any small animal when it comes to slaughter is the charge is the same as a large finished animal as most slaughter houses go on headage.
its the same for us when we take our dexters in i could have one of dads simmis done for the same money but we all preffer the dexter beef so have to pay the money.
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If you do try it, Jackie2, please do let us know how you get on.
One day, one of my Jerseys is going to drop a Jersey bullock, and I'll definitely be wanting him for our own freezer. If rose veal is a viable option it would save keeping him on to 18 months or more, and also probably mean I didn't have to buy a 3rd freezer! :D
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calves from knackerman, are stone cold dead,
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Ill let you know how I get on with it :)
No Blegian he said he would supply me with live calves
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Dairy bull calves are still being shot, so i can believe the knackerman can supply you.
Its well worth doing. it was the mainstay of my business for 7 years. we bought all the bull calves from2 dairy farms, at any one time we would have 60-80 ayshires on site. sometime jerseys and friesians.
get them to a decent size maybe 300kg liveweight, max. as previously said it costs the same to process a stirk as a big bullock, and keep them under 10 months old and balls on! otherwise they dont do the same.
as for cuts it endless. shoulder was as popular as loin. the french love the veal blanquet. osso bucco from the shin, calves liver. every type of steak just like beef.
i cannot understand why we dont eat more veal in this country its mad. we sold all we produced across farmers markets and resteraunts in scotland. but it took so much work!
well worth a try though. good luck
dominic
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would the calfs be tagged if you get them from knackerman if the farmer shoots them they wouldnt be tagged
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would the calfs be tagged if you get them from knackerman if the farmer shoots them they wouldnt be tagged
Legally (If I understand correctly) if it was born, it should be tagged.
Because we all tag and register our animals in the allocated timescale don't we? :innocent:
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the knackerman cannot supply un reg calves. i assume he just knows where he can get hold of them. you cannot move calves without tags and passport these days. you used to be able to move them with just a passport application but thats changed now.
i also think they have to be at least 7 days old now.
d
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And no farmer will keep a calf, feeding it valuable milk, and wait for seven days for a passport, pay for tags and then have it shot :-\
Knackerman will be collecting animals in a knacker wagon so can't transport live animals aswell.
Better approaching a dairy farmer direct, will cost you though as they will have to feed it while waiting for passport and tags, but still cheap in the grander scheme of things. £25 would probably buy you a dairy bull calf round here, maybe abit more. Milk powder isn't cheap, around £45, you'd want more than one calf at a time obviously so they'd get through the milk quicker and would need it for 8-10 weeks depending on how well they do. Starter pellets, hay...... Killing costs....Soon adds up :innocent:
As someone else said, keep the horns and nuts on and they'll grow better.
Also check you actually like Rosé veal first!!
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I was considering doing this last year but when we started looking we could not find any calfs available.
If anyone knows where I could get my hands on a couple in the north of england give me a shout
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Graham, they sell hundreds of them every Wednesday morning at Carlisle mart. Black & whites fetch up to £100, but you can pick up Jerseys and Ayrshires for tenners. And I suspect that if you approached dairy farmers who breed their own Ayrshire or Jersey replacements, they would be happy to sell young bull calves to you direct from the farm - which avoids the risk of picking up infections at the mart.
BH used to buy in calves to rear on the bucket - beefy types, to be sold as stores, or females to be kept on as suckler cows. He always says that anyone taking on young calves to rear on powdered milk is advised to get them at not less than one month old. Younger than that and they are just too likely to scour or get other problems, and die. Now that we rear bought-in calves on the Jerseys, we have found that we can buy them younger and they seem to be fine.
His other tip was to feed them only PSF (Pfizer scour forumla) for the first 24 hours, then onto the milk. Again, we haven't found this necessary when they are going onto a cow.
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Thanks Sally
Ohh gawd I know what would happen if a jersey calf came here :o we have a thing about jerseys ::)
Just an after thought, how successful would feeding a calf on goats milk be ?
we are probably going to have 40+ liters of goats milk a day and once the kids are weaned a lot of it will be spare
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Jerseys go through a gawky teenager stage - that'd help ;) Just don't keep 'em on till they get to the ugly duckling -> swan transformation - about 8 months :D
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I can hear Carlisle mart calling us ::)
what about the goats milk ?
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Dunno about using goats' milk for calves, sorry.
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Volac blossom, has a gut conditioner in, we never had scour problems. it was pneumonia that was the biggest killer of calves.
a nurse cow would be great! we reared 2 montbeliards of our jersey last year, bothe should have gone for veal, but i had lost the will by then and sold them.
just scratch the surface and there are hubdreds of calves out there. buy them off farm, avoid the market for very young calves.
But i loved rearing them.
dom
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We always used to buy (or be given) young calves which we always reared on goats milk sokel. No issues at all. In fact, often when we were given them, ours would do better on the goats milk than the other ones did on powdered. Best success story was a limision (sp?) cross calf bought for £5, fed on goats milk and grass, then sold after a few months for £220! We had a Hereford cross at the same time, nice calves both of them. That was very early nineties, not reared any since then.
Beth
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Thanks for the info, will be looking for a couple of calfs in the very near future ::)
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Well we have been in touch with Weelbirks (they do the Jersey Icecream) and popping over one day this week to have a chat ::)
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We sell all our black and white bull calves at 35 days old to a calf collecter, he then rears them for a few months and they get sold to waitrose.
The better calves (angus, limi and british blue cross freisians) get bought from the collector by mcdonalds who pay more than waitrose do
Although our black and white bull calves are massive and not much difference between them and the british blues, I think due to the good milk they get and that they are freisians not holsteins.
If I had the land one day I would love to try buy some off farm and rear some up for veal :)
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Well we have been in touch with Weelbirks (they do the Jersey Icecream) and popping over one day this week to have a chat ::)
Hillie is Wheelbirks Impuls Scent. They're lovely folks to deal with :) And their Jersey beef is delicious :yum:
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Been today and we are collecting 2 calf's on friday morning 1 is 7 weeks and the other 10 weeks old :love:
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Result! :thumbsup:
We shall, of course, require pictures... :eyelashes:
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Of course, pictures will be flooding the forum :roflanim:
would have collected them earlier but I have a hospital appointment tomorrow at carlisle so cant get everything ready for them untill thursday
They really are nice people at Wheelbirks and where happy to give us a guided tour of the whole farm and explain everything in detail
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This thread should be LOCKED! I am sooooo jealous.... :huff:
Sokel, please write up how you get on with them with goatsmilk. Mainly how much they take and for how long? As my pigs may be ready to go in October this year I could have loads of milk over by then...., going to milk 7 this summer....
And I am not that far from the North of Engand either....
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We always used to buy (or be given) young calves which we always reared on goats milk sokel. No issues at all. In fact, often when we were given them, ours would do better on the goats milk than the other ones did on powdered. Best success story was a limision (sp?) cross calf bought for £5, fed on goats milk and grass, then sold after a few months for £220! We had a Hereford cross at the same time, nice calves both of them.
I'm not sure that this would be financially viable today - the days when you could buy a limX calf for a fiver are long gone. You would be lucky to find anything much under £200 today. Also, it is a long time since we kept goats, but how much does it cost to produce a gallon of goat's milk?
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Good beef-cross calves fetch £200 to £450 at Carlisle at the moment.
But Ayrshire or Jersey bullocks fetch tenners :-[
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We have decided to keep them on Blossom powder Anke as thats what they have been reared on and TBH there is only another month or so of feeding milk going on the age they stop the milk at the farm.
If we get along ok with these 2 we will go for younger next time and try Goats milk.
VSS some of our goats give a gallon a day each when they are in full milk
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This year I would like a Jersey cow with a heifer at foot and a bull calf fostered on, Does anyone know a breeder or farm up north who might be willing to provide somthing like this?
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We always used to buy (or be given) young calves which we always reared on goats milk sokel. No issues at all. In fact, often when we were given them, ours would do better on the goats milk than the other ones did on powdered. Best success story was a limision (sp?) cross calf bought for £5, fed on goats milk and grass, then sold after a few months for £220! We had a Hereford cross at the same time, nice calves both of them.
I'm not sure that this would be financially viable today - the days when you could buy a limX calf for a fiver are long gone. You would be lucky to find anything much under £200 today. Also, it is a long time since we kept goats, but how much does it cost to produce a gallon of goat's milk?
Yes VSS you are correct this wouldnt be financially viable today- you will note I mentioned that was was in the very early nineties- which was 20 years ago.
I have no idea how much it costs to produce our goats milk, as we have the goats anyway for breeding/showing/home milk production. That they feed orphan lambs/calves etc is just a bonus.
They do produce a lot of milk, certainly over a gallon and some of them over 8 litres a day.
Hope the calves do well for you sokel.
Beth
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This year I would like a Jersey cow with a heifer at foot and a bull calf fostered on, Does anyone know a breeder or farm up north who might be willing to provide somthing like this?
In a word, no. Most of the Jerseys about are dairy cows, so do not rear their own calves let alone another.
Having said which, many farms have a Jersey or two to rear orphaned calves. Mostly they probably don't put her to a Jersey though, so if you were wanting a Jersey heifer calf at foot that would be hard to find. And she would be an older cow.
You can buy in-calf Jerseys from some dairy herds, so I guess you could enquire whether any would take an order for one with a new-born calf; and perhaps they would be prepared to set a foster calf on her for you. I think you would be looking at a lot of money though - maybe £3000 or even more.
The only other approach I could see working would be finding a 'nursemaid' (older) Jersey who has been used to suckle multiple calves but isn't suitable for use in the parlour. Again you could maybe commission the farm to produce her as the outfit you describe.
I'd be interested to know how you get on.
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we got Betty (Jersey X Friesian) + calf (heifer BB X) because her udder was buggered and was going to the knacker man. Ask around or at least make yourself known, as they do occasionally own up. Her udder is dropped, no good for commercial milking but fine for rearing calves and milking by hand! (All the princely sum of £400!). Our calf made £638 at market and she calved another one the day before we took her.
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I used to have a goat with huge bottle udders that dragged on the floor when full and tiny button teats that you couldn't milk for love ot money.I got her a calf and she learnt to stand on a bale while the calf suckled.Worked great till F&M when I couldn't sell the suckling "calf" or buy in another to ease her udder so she had to go on suckling even though the "calf" reached 18mnths,towered over her and when it "bumphed"would lift her off the ground but it was HER calf and woe betide any other calf that tried to suckle! ;D
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A jersey with a heifer calf at foot!!!!! a miracle would be needed.
you can find jerseys by asking around, i think an incalf cow would be your only hope.
i got twinkle from a very big dairy that got rid because she wasnt in calf. after she calved ;) 3 months later, it really was clear it was because of her udder, very small teats that the cluster falls off. so the dairy men must have just wanted rid, tell the boss she is barren and away she goes.
she is such a character, i still cant believe it!
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Really! Fair enough, as if it isnt hard enough getting livestock up here already! As you say I will have to buy a Jersey and do the rest myself. Naturally I will do the leg work on google but does anyone know a Jersey herd in the north or central belt?