New season calves are always adorable, but also a surprizing amount of work too. Calves are one of the few animals born without any immunity and get all of it from the colostrum gold in their mothers first four days of milk. It is called colostrum gold due to its very golden colour and calves must be kept in a very clean pen while they build up their natural immunity through good quality colostrum.
The calves ability to absorb the antibodies from the colostrum is optimal in the first 6hrs of birth and slowly reduces after the first 12hrs. We separate the 1st and 2nd day colostrum cows milk and this is fed to the one and two day old calves and the 3rd and 4th day colostrum fed to the slightly older calves. Our calves are fed on an adlib system and get fresh colostrum or milk depending on their age twice a day when small. This way all our calves have an excellent start in life and its easier for the wagyu calf rearers to grow them out well.
Our herd replacement calves we rear ourselves and they move outside to large grass paddocks with shelters when they are a few weeks old. They also receive adlib Lucerne baylage both in the calf pens and out in the paddocks and all easily put on 1kg a day. Lucerne is a high protein food like milk.
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