Rearing One of the biggest worries we had with increasing cow numbers and compacting the calving season was how we would deal with calf rearing. However we have discovered simple ways of coping with large numbers of calves. Fresh calved cows are milked using a dump line.
Milk is pumped into a separate tank where it forms a colostrum culture.
This milk requires regular agitation to ensure fermentation is aerobic and not anaerobic. Antibiotic must be kept out or the culture will be killed. Treated cows are milked into dump buckets. Calves are started in individual pens where they are fed with a bucket with a peach teat. This system has shown a number of significant benefits.