A correct diet ensures normal growth of animals and good weight gain. To raise a healthy calf, the period of feeding it whole milk must be at least 1 month.
The main diet of monthly calves
The calf at an early age is growing rapidly, the weight gain should be 500-700 g per day. In the first days he is given colostrum, then he is given whole fresh milk three times a day - 1.5 liters at a time. If there is none, then the milk is heated to 37 ° C. Cold swishing leads to disruption of normal digestive processes. At the age of 15-20 days, young animals are watered twice a day, the rate per day is left the same - 5 liters, gradually replacing the whole product with skim milk or milk powder. Two-month-old calves are completely transferred back.
It is advisable to add 50 g of fish oil to milk once a day to prevent rickets in young animals. Two-week-old calves are taught to plant food - the hay must be of high quality, without mold. In summer, calves from 20 days of age are released to graze on green grass. Eating roughage promotes good digestion.
Up to a month, young animals are given whole oats, thirty-day-old calves are fed with crushed grain mixture, which consists of wheat, barley, oatmeal. The feeding rate is 150-200 g per day for 1 head. You can feed them a concentrated feed, consisting of flaxseed and sunflower cake, corn and oatmeal flour, wheat bran - all this is taken in equal quantities. It is impossible to overfeed with crushed and concentrates, the rumen clogs in calves, which leads to bloating and even death of the animal.
Useful vitamins and feeding
Babies need grated carrots - a source of vitamin A. It is also advisable to give them special compound feed-starters, which are produced by the compound feed industry. They meet the needs of calves for lysine, protein, amino acids.
In a separate trough, babies should always have mineral feeding: chalk and salt, and in the drinker - clean water. It is useful to feed premixes containing micro- and macroelements, as well as feed antibiotics. The preparations "Batsitrin" and "Grizin" help to improve metabolism, as a result of which the calves grow rapidly.
Particular attention should be paid to the presence of vitamins in the diet, with their lack, especially in winter, synthetic vitamin complexes should be added to food. Young animals have unstable immunity, are susceptible to various infectious diseases, therefore, the buckets and troughs from which they feed and drink are kept clean.
In case of indigestion, the animal is stopped to drink milk, they give black steeply brewed tea, a decoction of oak bark, raw eggs, and antibiotics.
