Separate Homes for Baby Calves

[Homestead Hustle]

We're thinking about building a structure to house our baby calves for the first few months of their lives. Do you all separate your baby calves from their mothers or allow them to stay together? If you separate them, do you house each baby calf separately, have a few housed together, or house all your calves together?

 

[Harmony]

We do separate our calves from their mothers shortly after they're born. We do this because we don't want the moms stepping on their babies accidentally. We house the babies in a different part of the barn for about two months before we reintegrate them with their mothers.

 

[Skyline]

Yeah I separate them usually. Well I house them together due to practical matters and I don’t think it’s actually necessary to keep the babies apart from each other.

 

[Henderson]

I let them stay together and I've found it's less work that way. A newborn calf really needs that first shot of colostrum to give it the best chance at being healthy and thriving. The calf needing to suck gets it up and moving too. I tried separating them one year and I can't remember why. It was a bad decision. The heifers were distressed and the calves were too. That can mean sickness down the road. Keeping them together is what worked for me, but that's not the only way to do it.

 

[Kathy]

We separate our calves, too, but we just house them in their own little space together. We don't have individual houses for them, but that's a cool idea if you have the means to build several little houses.