The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Cattle => Topic started by: Cjnewton82 on April 26, 2015, 01:50:48 am
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ok I have been offed 2 dairy bull calfs, they are 4 weeks old still on the bottle from a dairy farmer I know. I was thinking of raising them to 9months old to produce veal for our freezers and some friends. but im new to cattle and would like some advice feed rates amount of milk needed a day water requirements etc pros and cons of my idea before I go futher thank you in advance
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Wouldn't have thought you'd make much money from them, input is expensive for calves. I'd feed milk twice a day, id asume they would be on two litres of milk at present? always allow access to clean fresh water, ventilation is a big thing for calves, access to cake but don't give them so much that they waste it all, don't start wean from milk until they are eating at least kg of cake. Keep everything very clean. What sort of health status is the farm/herd? Do they lose many calves, if o why? Read up on common issues and illnesses, calves can get very Ill very quickly.
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Have you tried veal? It's not the tastiest meat in the world and would be a waste to go to the trouble of producing something you end up not liking/eating.
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I love veal but I don't think there is a great market for it. Where I live its very difficult to get hold of (I posted on here about a year ago, looking for some) I tried the local supermarkets and the all looked at me blank. I ended up ordering it for collection from M&S
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Better if possible to keep them till 18 months I sent my 2 at that age an they were great meat they were Jersey
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I'd go for it. They've got a few weeks behind them now, so hopefully shouldn't die on you. They won't cost anything like a more commercial calf (which were up to £500 at Selby last week!) Alright they cost as much to rear in the end, but you'll still get some useful meat from them with nothing like as much money invested in them initially. So a good way for a novice to gain experience.
I would agree that you'd be better keeping them to 18months to get a useable amount of weight on them or your killing costs will take up a large proportion of your profit.
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I'd go for it. They've got a few weeks behind them now, so hopefully shouldn't die on you. .
immunity is at its lowest from 4 to 6 weeks (assuming they had sufficient colostrum ) so stress of moving could be a problem
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The farm I'm getting them from is agragricultural collage I have spoken at leath and asked a lot of questions. The farm is on lock down as they are TB testing so if all goes well in that regard they should arrive aged at about 8weeks. Fingers crossed it goes well.