Calving Speech
Hello my name is Katie-Ana and I am going to tell you some
things about calves. I hope you learn lots of new information about calves. I
know so much about calves because I live on a dairy farm.
Firstly a mummy cow has a baby. The calves have cords that
you have to spray with iodine. We always have to check if it is a girl or a
boy. The bobbies are the boys and the heifers are the girls.
The boys and girls get put into separate pens. The girl heifers
stay alive and have more babies. But the bobby boys have to
go on a big truck to the freezing works. They have to get chopped up. It makes
me very sad. Sometimes I cry but its okay because we have got a lot more calves
to take care of.
I have my own calf too. She is a heifer so I get to keep
her. I am very lucky. I feed her milk and hay and I call her Flora. She follows
me a lot too.
Next when a calf is born they need colostrum milk, which is
the mother cow’s first milk. This gives the calves a healthy immune system.
Calves also eat hay and meal. This gives them an appetite for eating grass.
When a calf reaches about 90 or 100 kilograms they are weaned onto grass.
When calves are sick they get put in a hospital pen and get
fed electrolytes and penicillin until they are healthy again.
Lastly a calf will become a yearling then an in-calf heifer.
Then she will have her own baby calves.
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