$5 calf -- 2009 version

Each year I raise a few bottle-fed dairy steers for my own consumption. So here's the 2009 version of that. You can see the original version here, with a followup on locating calves here.

Dairy steers are a byproduct of the dairy industry. A cow has to get pregnant to produce milk, and half the calves produced are male. So there's a constant supply of day-old dairy calves that you can either buy or sometimes are free. When you're buying these calves you have to be ready to pick them up and get them into your care as soon as possible. Dairymen regard the male calves as a nuisance, and are usually annoyed to have them even a few hours longer than necessary.

Right now (May, 2009) the price paid per hundred pounds of milk is under the cost to produce it by at least 25%. This sort of inbalance usually results in dairy herd reductions, so the calves might be a little harder to find.

With that said, calf prices have gone up a little; from $5 to $15. Milk replacer, powdered milk mix in 50lbs bags has gone up, from $80 to $85. Hay prices have gone down, from $200 a ton to $140 a ton, calf starter is a little more expensive; $380 a ton from $350 a ton.

This raises the estimated cost to wean from last years $113 to this years estimated $130. That's still a fairly good deal for a 3 month old weaned calf. All figures are materials only, not including labor. The labor is about 5 minutes a day per calf, consisting of warming and mixing the milk replacer and filling the nursing bottle for the calf.

So what's it like to get a dairy steer?

They're pretty big to start with. Big and wobbly. Usually I get them still wet from being born, and shaky and really eager and uncoordinated. I rub them down with some straw I bring, and get them packed into the truck. You want a canopy or a trailer with a top; they're still babies, and pretty susceptible to cold. As soon as I get them to the farm I put them into a prepared calf shelter and immediately warm a bottle for the calves. Getting some warm milk into them soon seems to help, but not too much. For the first few feedings I'll do a quart or so. Don't want them to scour.

The drill is a bottle morning and evening. A half quart to start, increasing to 2 quarts a day by a month old. They'll want it warmed to start, but by three or four weeks they'll take it cold, too. Its easier to get the powdered milk replacer to dissolve in warm water.
They have a bucket of water and a small amount of calf manna available to them at all times; gradually they'll eat more and more. After a month, you start putting a little alfalfa in the bucket with calf manna over it, gradually decreasing the amount of calf manna over two weeks until you're offering only alfalfa. You do this to transition their gut from milk/calf manna to a grass diet that'll be the bulk of their calories for the rest of their life. You want their stomachs to get used to this before you put them on pasture.

Finally after 3 months, out on pasture they go. I like to feed them a little more calf manna for a month or so afterwards, but most of their calories is the grass from the pasture itself.

I usually band castrate them at 3 to 4 weeks of age using an elastrator & green bands.

I personally like the idea that I'm utilizing an animal that might otherwise be wasted, and I like the low purchase cost. it doesn't add too much time to my daily routine.

I usually grow the calves out 18 to 30 months; I'll eat one at 18 months, and one at 30 months, for instance. That's part of the reason that I pick up calves at this time of year. The timing is right for an early-winter slaughter, when the weather is cold enough for outside hanging of the sides of beef.

The $5 calf

These are my $5 calves. Seems cheap, right? I thought so, too. They are pretty cheap, but not as cheap as it might seem. So here's the story.

I was up north of my farm, attending a livestock auction in the hope of finding some pigs to buy. The trip was a bust for that purpose, but since i was up there, I checked the local craigslist for people selling pigs, and ran across an ad by Rachel. Rachel and her nephew Jesse both raise really nice pigs and I have to say that their hoop barn is spotless. It's really clear that they take great care of their pigs.

Rachels and Jesses pig operation shares a property with a replacement holstein heifer operation. They take small female dairy cows and raise them, eventually selling them to farms as milk cows.

So we're talking about pigs, and I asked some quesitons about the calves we were surrounded by, and Rachel mentioned that the price for calves had crashed -- you could buy a day-old calf for $5. A few years ago, she said, you could get $150 for the calf, but the price of feed was so scary this year that people weren't buying them to feed.


Dairy Steers are cheaper

You see, a dairy breeds take longer to reach market weight than do beef breeds. And that means you get fewer pounds of meat for your pounds of feed. It also means that you end up keeping the steer a little longer than you might with a beef breed -- and if it's important for you to get a quicker return, a dairy steer isn't quite as efficient.



But for $5, it seemed a bargain. So two weeks later I was driving back up there to pick up my first three calves and some surplus calf domes at the same time. It turns out that it's pretty easy to transport calves with a flatbed trailer. You strap the calf dome down, and put the calf in it, and that's it. I put down a bale of hay to provide cushioning and some warmth for the little guys, and off we went.

Cost

Cost so far: $5 for the calf. $80 per calf for a 50lb bag of milk replacer. $3 for a 2 quart nursing bottle. $15 for a bag of calf manna, and $15 for a very nice bale of alfalpha hay. And the calf dome for $190. Total of $308.00


Holstein steers vs Jersey steers

There are two common dairy cows in this country. If it's a commercial dairy, it's probably either a holstein based operation or a jersey based operation. I chose holstein steers because the fat is whiter on their carcass than the jersey cow. The taste is similar, but I prefer a white fat.


Where can you get low-cost calves?

Any dairy operation is going to have surplus male calves. Some farmers try to have their calves at the same time, others spread it out. Go ask your local dairy. In my case, the farmer was pleased to find someone who wanted to grow out the calves and not waste them. For $5 it wasn't really worth his time, and I felt kinda bad about the low price, so I salved my conscience later in the year by paying $20 for the next two.


Advantage in buying calves direct from the farmer

The first few hours of a calves life are pretty important. The most important part is that they get some colostrum from their mother before they're pulled off the cow. I wouldn't buy one of these calves from an auction for fear that it hadn't gotten the dose of colostrum and won't survive as a result. When you're dealing with a price this low you want to make it as easy for the farm as you can. If you get a call that he has calves, be prepared to go pick them up as soon as possible. The space taken by one of these little boys is usually sorely needed if a lot of cows are birthing, and the sooner you take it into your care the better it will do.

How much work is bottle-feeding a calf?

The basic chore is to warm 2 quarts of powered milk twice a day -- morning and evening -- and make sure that the calf has water and an increasing amount of calf feed and hay each day. With a calf dome it's about 5 minutes per day per calf. This is a chore that I'd say that an 8 to 10 year old could do pretty handily. Every week or so you need to throw in more bedding for the 3 months that they're in the calf dome. I use wood chips that I get for free from tree service companies in my area. I fill a 30 gallon garbage can with them, and then use a shovel to put a 3" layer of new chips down every week or 10 days.

In the last month of the 90 day weaning period you're offering less milk and calf feed, and more hay, transitioning them to a new diet. Correctly done, at the end of this they're ready to go on pasture. They still like calf feed.

Final cost

This year each calf cost me $308 to wean. I've also put up 100 bales of hay per cow to supplement their pasture during the winter months, for another $200. In retrospect I should have purchased a round bale instead of small square bales. A round bale of the same weight would have been $40. My hard costs at the end of the year are $1/lb. Next year, since I'll be able to re-use the calf dome and I'll be smarter about buying hay, I'd expect my cost to be about 50 cents a pound for the 500-600lb cows I have now.

the cows and sheep are chowing down on spent grain from a local microbrewery. They love the stuff.

If you have trouble finding a calf, I've written up the basic steps to finding one here

http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2008/12/5-calf-followup.html