Calving is relentless. And the decisions that shape an animal's entire life get made in the middle of it, thirty seconds at a time.
Karen Fraser has reared calves through just about every version of this job — from converting a Hawke's Bay potato farm to 1,500 cows in the early 2000s, to running young stock on Rakaia Island and Woodstock Farms, to teaching people who'd never touched an animal how to rear calves properly. These days she's one half of The Calf Experts alongside ruminant nutritionist Stacey Cosnett, and a technical specialist at Farmlands.
She sat down with George and Conan on George's farm to go through calf rearing the way it actually happens at 5am, not the way it looks in a manual.
We get into the five Qs of colostrum — including the one nobody talks about, and why a frightened calf absorbs less of what you just fed it. Whether to tube a calf or teach it to drink, a question George and his dad have never agreed on. Why topping up a water bucket with a garden hose is quietly teaching your calves not to eat. Rumen development, and why you're really feeding two animals at once. Ad lib feeding, and why the step-down needs 21 days rather than 14.
And the question we finished on: what's good calf rearing actually worth in lifetime production?
00:00 How good's dairy?
00:47 Welcome — Karen Fraser
01:01 From potato growers to 1,500 cows
02:34 How The Calf Experts started
04:19 The five Qs of colostrum
06:56 Squeaky clean — and the Q nobody talks about
08:52 The first two feeds
09:34 Tube it, or teach it to drink?
12:06 Water: why a bucket is a problem
15:07 What skimming does to the grown cow
16:16 Rumen development — you're feeding two animals
18:54 Fibre, acetate and the 10% rule
20:13 Ad lib feeding, and the 21-day step-down
23:02 What George does on his farm
25:40 The best calf sheds Karen has seen
27:46 What's good calf rearing worth?
29:48 Takeaways
32:32 Where to find Karen
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