Question

I would like to thank you all for for the comments on last week’s post. It was good to hear from all of you. With this in mind, I wanted to ask you all a question. With all of this calving that has been going on, I have been thinking about how we supplement newborn calves that we have to help. Since we certify our herd through IMI Global as Verified Natural Beef and GAP Level 4, we aren’t allowed to feed any animal byproducts to our cattle. This didn’t phase us too much because we hadn’t been with one exception.

When I was a kid we would use lamb milk replacer for newborn calves because it was easier on their stomachs than calf milk replacer. Now we use milk replacer that only comes from cows and 100% dried bovine colostrum when we need colostrum supplemented or replaced. During the cold weather, when we had to help quite a few calves out, I got to thinking: how many consumers were really bothered by the idea of feeding a calf milk from another type of animal? I’m not planning on switching or anything, but I just wanted to ask: Is this something that matters to any of you?

Thanks for all of the answers in advance and I hope you all are doing well. We are enjoying the nicer weather and it looks like we may even get a little rain shower tonight.

by Brandon Greet