Growing healthy and happy Calves that become a strong bloodline of Cows...

Healthy Cows are grown from healthy Calves, the first start a Calf gets in life is incredibly important in determining how they will develop and grow later. Calves are one of the few animals born with absolutely no immunity at all and all their immunity comes from their mother in the first 4 days of life. The Cow produces a yellow coloured milk called Colostrum and all the antibodies are transfered to the calf through this Colostrum.

Thats why their pens needs to be kept meticulously clean and here at Windvale Farm these calves above are 1 day old. They start off in a learning pen to learn to drink easily off the feeder and they adlib feed throughout the day to try and mimic how they naturally would on their mothers. The pens start slightly smaller for the first couple of days so its easy for them to find a calf feeder which is set at the exact height a cows udder would be. We also put in extra feeders so its even easier for them to find a teat, this little mob of 9 Calves has two feeders and each have 10 teats so 9 calves have 20 teats to drink from. They also get a blue spot for each of the first four days so its easy to determine exactly how old they are and easily show they are still learning to use the feeders and on Colostrum only. On the 5th day the Cows white millk comes through.

These calves then merge in with another mob a similar age into a bigger pen, then they transition outside into large paddocks. Generally around 10-15 days old they are outside in large grass paddocks with North facing shelters and drinking off a bigger mobile feeder on wheels.

Our Wagyu Calves are also blood tested between 2-7 days old and they are able to determine how sucessfully the passive transfer of antibodies from Cow to Calf was and the quality of the Colostrum.

These are our latest results and as you can see, our Calves are treated as the precious little babies that they are, so they grow into big healthy happy Cows that dont get sick.