# How long do you bottle feed?



## elevan

I see so many different opinions on this everywhere I look.
Some say:
60 days
4 months
6 months!!



So how long do YOU bottle feed your calves??

Mine is about 60 days old now.  We've transitioned him to getting his milk via bucket rather than bottle...but still, we need to figure out when to wean him.

If it makes any difference, he won't eat calf starter / grower pellets (at all).  He will eat calf mana pellets if we put them in his milk bucket and pour the milk over it    He is eating grass well already.

We plan to grass feed and finish him. The only reason he is getting pellets now is that he was a sickly baby and we needed to get him up to strength.

Thanks for your input!


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## sheepboy1

I dont know i usaully give one bag of milk replacer to one calve so how long it takes it to go through one bag than i would wean and he will eat when he gets hungry enough so when you wean him put the feed in there.


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## elevan

I don't plan to continue pellets for much longer.  They were only intended to give him additional strength as he got better from being down shortly after we brought him home.

He'll go on pasture and hay only once weaned and stay that way until it's time to take him in.


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## aggieterpkatie

We always weaned calves at 8 weeks (dairy calves).  Beef calves stayed w/ mom until roughly 8 months. If he was sickly and you want to feed him longer, do it! It certainly won't hurt him to stay on milk longer.


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## goodhors

We have done our bottle babies 90 days.  They were not eating well, just nibbling pellets at the 60 day mark.  They were winter calves, so still quite cold and damp when the 60 day mark rolled by.  I did not want to remove all source of nutrition with weaning at 60 days, make them sick.  I said just keep giving the replacer when they are cleaning up their pellets and eating hay or grass in the field.  

So far, doing milk replacer for the 90 days has left us with better looking, seemingly larger, healthier calves when we cut off the milk supply.  None got sick after, had some good size and weight on them,  so no backsliding on condition after weaning either.  

Ours each seem to go thru about 3 large bags of milk replacer in that 90 days, with 3 calf nursing bottle of replacer a day each.  Price of a bag of replacer is a LOT cheaper than a vet visit and getting them rehydrated or losing the calf.  I do swap to buckets about midway thru, but measure with the bottle for mixing.


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## redtailgal

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