Susan and I have been on a steep learning curve these past few weeks.

Firstly, the new venture into calf rearing has brought back memories from my younger days, when I tapped into the reservoir of knowledge that more experienced operators possessed.

So, when I was chatting to someone that had reared calves for years, I would ask about ten questions regarding most aspects of daily management – if there’s one thing I’ve noticed about other stock people, they don’t mind sharing all their tips and hints.

But as well as getting a crash course in how to look after wee calves, something cropped up in the yearling heifers that I have no experience of either; a fellow dairy heifer rearer phoned me to say two of his cattle had a fair touch of bloat one morning.

After the usual lengthy farmer discussion on the subject, we were both a bit perplexed because it didn’t fit any of the typical grazing conditions that we associated with bloat, ie a sudden shift onto a clover-rich sward.

Then the following morning, during a routine TB test, the last heifer down my crush was showing classic symptoms. She wasn’t really uncomfortable but was well gassed up on her left side.

One bottle of Sainsbury’s finest vegetable oil later, and the sponginess disappeared within a few hours.

I checked them later that evening, and a different animal was slightly blown up, but seemed content. Next morning, those two were fine, and another one was, again, a bit swollen.

Now here’s the funny thing: they had been grazing this field for three weeks, were set stocked, there was a small percentage of clover across the entire area, but no way was it a clover-dominant sward.

The same applied to my farming friend, and we agreed that how or why it occurred was a mystery – I do wonder if I’ve had a wee touch of bloat in the past and maybe wasn’t aware of it and the individual animals released the gas themselves?

Calves

On the other hand, anything at all that went wrong with the baby calves was new to me (sorry, us).

So, we learned early on that when a calf has a touch of pneumonia, or has succumbed to whatever virus was circulating, it looks as if it is dying. But one injection, and twelve hours later, the same beast is bouncing round the pen leaving you wondering what you were worried about.

It strikes me that they are fickle little creatures, terribly ill one moment, then completely recovered just as quickly. That said, I am told that if they aren’t caught early, it’ll be a phone call for the fallen stock lorry.

Probably the most frequent piece of advice from several people was the need for a deep bed of clean straw. Some would even argue that a good warm bed is almost worth a feed of milk, as calves are prone to using up energy to keep warm. Of course, this common-sense guidance was new to me.

On the feeding front, we decided not to skimp on the input side since we hadn’t the experience to cut many corners. Opting for twice-a-day warm feeding seemed sensible, and we slightly exceeded the instructions on the bag after consultation with a few more old hands.

Actually, feeding them twice is a great way to spot any that are a bit off colour at the earliest stage. So, for the main rearing phase, each calf received 3.5 litres twice daily, and we fed about 900g of powder/head/day.

Mistake

And on the subject of powder, I mistakenly thought milk powder was simply milk powder, simple as that. No, wrong again Derek. One of our vets was in the shed and asked me what powder I was feeding. I told him about the fantastic stuff I had chosen and how it contained some pretty fancy extra ingredients.

He then delivered a metaphorical boot in the guts by grimacing slightly and informing me that some of those magic extras were to cover up for a lack of good protein and fat sources. “Show me the bag,” says he, and he went on to point out the negatives associated with my chosen brand (which, incidentally, had been thoroughly recommended by a so-called expert). So, I immediately changed brands, bought a pile of a very well-known make, and discovered it was a lot cheaper into the bargain.

Salesman

I sometimes wonder if inexperienced farmers (in any facet of agriculture) must be a salesman’s dream? When you don’t know much about a new enterprise, it is incredibly easy to get sucked in by someone confidently spouting a load of rubbish. I suppose the secret is to sort the wheat from the chaff, but it’s not always that simple, is it?