Bags of Colostrum
The pasteurizer. It kind of looks like a washing machine.
We put waste milk in the pasteurizer, it holds 35 gallons
but will work with as little as 5 gallons. It heats the milk to 140
degrees for one hour. Then it cools it down to 55 degrees. Then
it reheats the milk to 110 degrees when we feed the calves. The
milk can be pasteurized at a higher temperature for a shorter period
of time but that doesn't work for the colostrum so we leave it set
at 140 degrees for an hour to eliminate mistakes. The colostrum bags can
be set right in with the milk and the heat transfers through the bag and
pasteurizes the colostrum while in the bags.
A calf that is only a few days old.
2 week old calves that just learned to drink out of pails.
We bought our pasteurizer four years ago. It has paid for itself faster than anything else we have done on the farm with the exception of stray voltage problems. Before we bought the pasteurizer we were feeding a colostrum replacer and milk replacer to the heifer calves. We weren't feeding milk in order to avoid the spread of certain dieses from cow to calf. Since we started feeding pasteurized milk to the calves they are healthier. They are weaning at heavier weights than before and are 2-3 weeks younger when weaning. Today, the calves rarely get sick, whereas before we were treating for scours all the time and we had a high death rate.
