practical farming solutions… #2

milk-feeding system for calves…

Our home made milk-feeding arrangement consists of regular rubber tits fitted into garden hose female connections. These snap onto male connections that are mounted in tubes for fixed mounting at calf box edges, or adapted to container-caps for the larger containers used in the calf pen.

We take female connections for 19 mm hose and cut the inner “teeth” that are there to clamp and secure a hose securely in place, off. Cutting these teeth means these connections can't be used for garden hoses anymore, but they now become perfect holders for regular, unaltered, rubber tits.

The garden hose parts are interchangeable and lasts for years, and the whole system is as cheap and efficient as they come.

Since male connections come in numerous forms to fit many garden watering units, we can adapt them to all kinds of containers or container-caps. We reuse various detergent containers in our milk-feed arrangements, and have so far not had any problems in finding suitable garden hose system parts.

Garden hose connections are pretty much standardized where it matters most, so we can choose freely between brands. At the moment most parts are of the “Gardena” brand – as pictured, as they seem to have the toughest plastic parts and the ones that are easiest to adapt to our use.

The rubber tits  are the only parts that get worn down. These are of the regular type made for all kinds of ready-made calf-feeding systems, and we replace them once a year when the rubber no longer is any good, or when the calves have chewed them up completely. Usually they get the tip cut off when the calves have chewed that bit to pieces, and the calves continue to suck happily on the shortened and completely open rubber hose. We could actually have used short pieces of garden hose as tits, but they are a bit harder to suck and chew on.

restricting milk-flow:

We wanted to restrict milk-flow a bit since calves are naturally adapted to sucking on the more slow-flowing cow tits. We think it is right to mimick nature whenever and wherever possible, and in theory at least a slower milk-flow would be more natural and satisfying for the calf once its urge to suck gets triggered.

The simplest way to restrict milk-flow is to feed the milk through a very narrow tube or hole. These restrictions can become clogged up by milk-fat residue, so we have to pay attention to cleanliness when preparing the containers for each meal. Other than that it works great and the calves can suck for much longer than would be the case with no restrictions in place.

One funny thing is that we couldn't find the right-sized ready-made circular plate with a suitable hole in it that could be inserted as flow-restriction for the largest containers. The solution was (as always) “money”, as the coin we know as “one Norwegian krone” has a suitable hole in the center and fits perfectly in size. It also has the right thickness to create an airtight fit in the gap under the rubber seal in a finished cap connector.

These coins last long too (and they are cheap). Thus, they are also used to restrict water-flow throughout the entire water-post system on our pastures to prevent catastrophic loss of water in case of breakage. Perfect use of good money, I think.

preventing leakage:

For the fixed arrangement in the calf boxes the milk-flow restricting tube is simply put into the milk container from the top. This means the calf has to suck milk up from the container, and leakage is thereby kept at an absolute minimum.

Calves may become impatient to begin with since the milk doesn't arrive immediately, but once they got the taste and the idea, they suck until the milk flows. Most calves learn this themselves within a day or two after calving, while some may need some guidance for a few days.

The larger containers has the male connection fitted to the caps and are tilted, so one might think they would leak until all milk is gone. Not so, since the calves suck a slight air-depression in them and the air has to enter through the milk-flow resticting hole.

By removing the rubber seal on the male connection the air can bypass the calves mouth, and it is the calf's sucking-action that creates enough movement in the container and milk to make the air bubble in, and thereby prevents the depression from becoming too strong a vacuum to suck against.

If a calf thinks the milk arrives too slowly, it bangs his snout against the tit and shakes the container – just as it would do if the mother-cow didn't deliver milk freely enough for the calf's taste. This action works fine on our milk-containers too, as the shaking disturbs the air-pressure balance and makes more air bubble in and more milk flow out.

Once the calf stops sucking the container and the milk inside it stops moving. The air-depression inside it then almost immediately reaches a stable level, and the higher air-pressure on the outside prevents milk from leaking out. The prinsiple is old and well proven, and works perfectly as long as all hose connection parts are clean and the cap and the container itself are airtight.

milk container racks:

As shown on the picture we place 12 liters plastic containers side by side in a simple home-made rack mounted on the inside of the widest calf pen gate. This makes it easy to handle the entire feeding operation from the outside, although in practice we first get the calves lined up and sucking on their respective milk tits, and then enter the calf pen through another gate so we can check up on the individual calf while they're having their meal.

The rack itself is sturdy and mainly built in solid 2-by-4, since a number of calves side by side rhythmically sucking and pushing at the rack can easily “rock the boat” and break down an entire rack. That more than half a dozen 12 liters containers also put some load on the rack and gate it's mounted on, is also taken into consideration.

We have had this system working for many years bow, and after having fiddled a bit in the beginning to find the best brands and parts and perfecting details, we're now pretty happy with it. Separate containers makes individual feed-corrections easy, and we can feed many calves in one place in one go without problems.

Having more than around half a dozen of these containers close together in the same straight rack would make it difficult for all but the smallest-sized calves to line up properly. Calves quickly become narrow at the head-end and round and fat near the back, and need space to “fan out”.

Thus, if we have more then 6-7 calves to feed, we line them up in groups in front of separate racks of this size and shape. At our farm the use of more than one rack is rarely ever necessary, but we have provided for it just to be on the safe side.