Any type of cattle requires special care, protection from the weather, feeding, walking, and in a sharply continental climate this is especially important. During the grazing season, cows calmly get everything they need to live on your farm, but during the period when you have to use purchased feed, the animal may experience discomfort from a lack of nutrients in its body, moreover, a lack of immunity causes various diseases. To avoid this, you need to properly balance the feed for your livestock, it must include all the necessary vitamins for calves.
Vitamins for calves
What vitamins do calves need?
Attention! Ordinary hay does not always make up for the necessary balance, if it is stored incorrectly, then it can lose all its useful qualities. therefore, it is worth supplementing the diet with various supplements that will restore the loss. In addition, many of them have other useful qualities, they can increase the productivity of your herd, because it largely depends on nutrition.
The most important vitamins for the life of cattle are A, B, E, D.
Vitamin A
Helps develop newborn calves’ mucous membranes, protects against disease, and promotes growth and mass gain. It is found in milk and carrots, which should be finely chopped before feeding.
Vitamin D
Responsible for the proper growth of bones in calves, it normalizes metabolism, and also protects against many diseases. The easiest way to make up for its shortage is by adding fish oil to the feed. Naturally, it enters the body through sunlight, in winter it is not enough, so it is necessary to use feed additives.
Vitamin B
Stabilizes the metabolism, adult cows have practically no problems due to the lack of this vitamin, but for young calves, its presence in the body is very important. Its deficiency can cause stomach diseases, problems with the secretion of gastric juice and much more. In the right quantities found in fodder bran, fresh herbs and high-quality hay.
Green grass for calves
Vitamin E
Helps calves develop muscle mass, protects the liver. It supports the work of the heart and skeletal muscles, and also helps to develop immunity due to phagocytes. Plus, of course, everything, vitamin E contributes to safe pregnancy and calving. They are rich in a variety of herbs that can be found while grazing on pastures.
Calcium
As everyone knows, it strengthens bones, but this applies not only to humans, for cattle, bones play a huge role in everyday life, because their musculoskeletal system is in constant tension.
Phosphorus
Responsible for the functioning of the central nervous system, and also plays an important role in protecting muscles from a variety of chemical processes.
Signs of vitamin deficiency
Avitaminosis in young animals leads to a number of problems. The lack of vitamin A is reflected in the development of the calf, its weight gain. Its deficiency causes eye diseases such as: conjunctivitis, night blindness and more. But not only the external mucous membranes suffer, inflammation of the digestive tract is also possible.
An insufficient amount of vitamin E causes dystrophy of the heart and bone muscles, malfunctions of the nervous system, as well as impaired fertility due to a disorder in the functioning of the sex glands.
Vitamin D deficiency leads to impaired bone growth, to a disease such as rickets. The weight gain of the calf decreases, development slows down, activity decreases. The structure of the costal bones changes, which leads to severe ailments.
Rickets in a calf
Vitamin B deficiency is also characterized by growth retardation due to nervous system failure, which leads to violent behavior and paralysis. Moreover, the calf’s coat can thin out, and skin ulcers may also occur.
Use of antibiotics
To cope with the symptoms and the source of the disease caused by a lack of one or another vitamin, it is worth turning to the use of antibiotics, preparations containing microorganisms that can resist harmful bacteria. Now their use in agriculture is practiced everywhere, both in injections and in powders for adding to feed.
Each antibiotic is aimed at a specific area (sometimes several different) of the disease, so it is important to accurately select the right drug for you. Now there are a lot of different antibiotics on the Russian counter, so if you own agriculture, you should know a little about the most common of them.
- Penicillin not only treats infectious diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, it is also used to help the animal gain weight, increase the amount of weight gain. It is injected into muscle tissue several times a day, diluted in novocaine.
- If the use of penicillin is inappropriate, it is worth using ecmonovocillin, it destroys the infection at an early stage of infection, and is also used for respiratory diseases.
- Bicilin stops the growth of infectious organisms, restores the normal functioning of the animal’s blood circulation.
- Phenoxymethylpenicillin does not dissolve in gastric juice, which allows it to be used orally and treat stomach diseases.
- Biomycin is another popular antibiotic, it is used in many animal species to treat diseases such as dysentery, lung damage, inflammation, etc. The action of the drug lasts long after the course of administration and protects the animal from re-infection.
Bicilin
Vitamin feed and supplements
In addition to active drugs, it is worth paying attention to all kinds of ways to prevent diseases. One of the most effective are specialized feeds that contain all the necessary vitamins for cattle, because nutrition mainly affects the quality of products produced by cows.
When using supplements, it is very important to take into account the parameters of the animal, such as weight and age, in order to correctly comply with the norm. It is also important to correctly balance the various substances in the feed. Very often, on large farms, it is directed to different stages of development and sexes of animals.
To feed a bull, the presence of amino acids is necessary, which yeast replenishes, they affect the ability to replenish offspring – the most important task for cattle. In addition, before insemination, the male’s diet should contain a higher concentration of vitamins.
There are also premixes – they are included in combined feeds and help the animal’s body: they regulate metabolism, accelerate muscle mass gain, and also strengthen immunity and stabilize the gastrointestinal tract.
In addition to vitamins, proteins are added to the feed, which serves for even greater daily weight gain. It is a preventive measure against metabolic disorders, diarrhea and contributes to the development of your.
Reference. The advantage of vitamin food is that flavoring additives improve its palatability, which contributes to weight gain. Most often, it contains fish meal, milk and corn protein amino acids and much more, but the presence of proteins increases the cost of the mixture.
In order for the calf to quickly gain weight and grow strong and healthy, the correct vitamin composition in the feed must be observed from the first days of his life. The planned diet should fully cover the daily requirement of vitamin A, which is 40 IU. The dosage of vitamin D should be at least 000 IU per day, and the norm of vitamin E is 3000 IU.
These standards can be met in a variety of ways. Starting from the 5-6th day of a calf’s life, it can already be gradually accustomed to vitamin hay. Legumes, forbs, mixtures of legume and cereal hay are suitable as the basis for such feed. All harvested greens are dried for two hours. It is necessary to feed the animal with fresh hay. If by the evening there is still food left in the trough, it must be removed and replaced with a new one in the morning.
Fresh hay for calves
At the same age, concentrates will also help replenish vitamin reserves. Of course, it is still too early to give them in their entirety. Therefore, it is best to start with oatmeal jelly. It is prepared as follows:
- 1 kg of oatmeal is poured into the selected container.
- Hot water in a volume of 2,5 liters is gradually poured into it and the mixture is allowed to brew.
- After half an hour, the water is carefully poured through a sieve into a saucepan, while squeezing out the thick.
- The resulting liquid is put on fire and boiled over medium heat until it turns into a thick mass.
The resulting product before feeding the baby is heated to a temperature of 35 degrees. It brings even more benefits if you first mix it with milk. The initial dosage is not more than 200 g per day and gradually increases in the future.
From 10 days of age, the standard solid diet can also be supplemented with hay decoction. To make it, you need to pour finely chopped fresh hay (1 kg) with hot water (5 l). Water must be boiled, but with a temperature not higher than 70 degrees. The resulting composition is infused for a day. Then the liquid is filtered and heated to a temperature of 60 degrees, pouring 5 g of salt there. Then let it cool down to 35 degrees and give the calf. It is not recommended to store such a tool.
You can also supplement the general diet with the juice of high-quality silage, which is boiled for an hour with water in a ratio of 2: 1. After cooking, the greens are squeezed out, and the resulting liquid is mixed with water and given to the baby 3-4 times a day. Juicy feed and pure silage can be given to a calf no earlier than 30 days after birth.
Conclusion
Nutrition is one of the most important conditions for keeping cattle, it is responsible for all the most important qualities of animals. The right combination of additives can improve milk yield or increase cow weight. It is very important to properly feed newborn calves and their mothers, the population and health of your livestock depends on this.
