Rolling Acres - This and That

[RollingAcres]

Depends what your intended purpose for them is.

It would most probably be for the freezer down the road.

 

[RollingAcres]

@farmerjan thank you for taking your time to post this and share your experience!

@Baymule you're right, we have a great group of folks here to always quick in helping and teaching others.

 

[Donna R. Raybon]

A word about castration.... knife is best, as you know for certain you have gotten both testicles completely as you eyeball both of them on the ground. Younger is better.

Check to ensure they actually have both descended before you castrate. Banding is fine, IF the person doing it is very careful to ensure that both testicles are truly descended and below the band.

I have had calves that failed to have testicle descend, so vet had to go fish and get it. I have had calves that someone else banded and he failed to get one testicle below the band. Both cases will lead to an infertile but still dangerous 'bull' rather than a less dangerous steer.

By having clean water available in pen as well as fresh calf starter/grower feed, you can get calves weaned as soon as they consume two pounds of starter a day. I put fresh out every day and feed whatever they leave to other stock. I start mine at a few days old as they are wanting that bottle and I feed some feed by hand to get them the idea that it is OK to eat. Calves that are raised on momma will start eating feed with her at less than a week old.

Unless it is bitter cold weather, I wean off milk at about 60 days. If it is cold or calf seems to be a bit less than I want, then I continue one bottle a day for another 30 days.

If it is bitter cold, then calf coat is a good thing. A calf with momma can sidle up any time to get a full belly of warming milk. A bottle calf can not. Also reason I keep my bottle babies in the barn when it rains until they are three or four months old. Mine ran with my goats, who HATE rain, so they would all run for the barn at the first damp drop!

The calf starter should be medicated to prevent coccicia. If it isn't then you have to use something like Corid as directed. They will need blackleg and pinkeye vaccination, too. Blackleg is a clostridium (same family as tetanus, botulism, anthrax) and is in the environment. Young stock under two years old at highest risk. You don't usually see any symptoms, just find them dead. When you touch them, especially about the legs, they feel like a sponge full of water, crackle and pop, as air is between skin and muscle. You will never forget how that feels, nor mistake it for anything else once you have one die this way.

Jersey crosses are great, tough little boogers that grow off well. Lots of good experience on here.

 

[Donna R. Raybon]

Heifer bottle calf that is 'cheap' most likely is a twin with a bull. Fine for freezer beef. They are 9 out of 10 times sterile and it is hard to determine that 1 out of 10 until she does not cycle. Bovine twins share the same placenta and the heifer gets a dose of hormones from bull calf. If, that rare 1 in 10 happens to have separate birth sack/placenta the heifer will be fertile. But, unless you deliver that calf, you don't know that. I have raised several sets of bull heifer twins and every heifer ended up freezer beef because not fertile.

Sheep and goat have a placenta for each baby, so no shared blood supply.

 

[greybeard]

A form of freemartinism does occur in virtually every species of mammals, some fish and birds..including humans. It is rarely noticed/noted tho as one of the twins is not born, but instead, is absorbed by the zygote of the other early on. Once thought to be extremely rare, dna testing has now shown what is called chimerism is much more prevalent than once thought, maybe even fairly common. In the case of female livestock, if the female doesn't breed, in almost all cases she is simply accepted to be sterile, no real 'why' explanation ever sought and she is culled/sold/eaten. There are other ways chimerism can happen, such as the placentas fusing together which bovines do more naturally and both offspring are born.
Humans and animals have been found with an organ or 2 containing dna completely different from the rest of the body and even 2 different blood types. It plays havoc with maternity tests in humans as the dna test may show no chance a specific 'known someone' fathered the child. One case where a cheek swab was done & showed "no" while a sample taken from another location showed positive paternity.
Chimerism probably happens a lot in all species of livestock and we simply don't know it because most livestock is not dna tested as a matter of course.

And, a short but fairly interesting read about chimerism in humans....how a baby was fathered by his unborn uncle.
http://time.com/4091210/chimera-twins/

 

[RollingAcres]

That article is an interesting read.

 

[RollingAcres]

Went out to our raspberry patch earlier and picked some raspberries. There are more out there that will be ready in a couple of days.

 

[Bruce]

You are ahead of us RA and not that far south. Maybe a different kind of raspberries, I have no idea what we have, they came with the house.

 

[RollingAcres]

You are ahead of us RA and not that far south. Maybe a different kind of raspberries, I have no idea what we have, they came with the house.

Bruce I have no idea what we have either, they came with the house as well. But i do know we have an early maturing kind and also a late maturing kind.

 

[Jennifer Hinkle]

It has always been my opinion that if most people realized what a free range chicken eats they would never eat an egg.

We have free range chickens and they eat everything. We give them feed every once in a while, but mostly find there own food.