Calves/Pasturized Milk

     The last month has been busy with cows calving.  It turned out to be a good time because it was after the heat and before harvest.  In the last 26 days we have had 48 calves.  When a new calf is born we give it a couple of vaccines as soon as we can.  Then we wait an hour before we feed it.  We save the colostrum from the older cows and pasteurize it in special bags that hold a gallon each.  After it is pasteurized we freeze the colostrum bags.  When a new calf is born we thaw the bags either in hot water or the pasteurizer.  Then we can feed the new calf a full gallon of pasteurized colostrum.  After the first feeding the calves are fed a 1/2 gallon of pasteurized milk out of a bottle twice a day until they are one or two weeks old when we train them to drink out of a pail.  Then gradually increase the portion size until they are drinking a gallon twice a day.

                                                                     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.