Calf Raising Tips From Maria Neilsen: California Cattlewoman

Maria Neilsen is a California Cattlewoman with a passion for her cattle, educating others new to calf raising, and promoting the beef industry to consumers. She lives on the ranch where her husband’s family homesteaded in the 1870’s. Her daughter makes 6 generations that have been involved with running the ranch. Over the years the Neilsen’s have had to deal with many tough events that come along with ranch life.  In 2021 a large fire burned much of their grazing land, including their Mountain allotment in the El Dorado National Forest where they had summered cattle since 1935. Once burned it is years before the land can be grazed again. This left a lastingly effect on the operation to the point they had to drop the number of cattle they were running.

The Neilsen’s have faced matters of fire, water availability, acorn toxicity, and scouring calves just to name a few. Maria has taken many of the problems head on and using her resources has found productive solutions to those problems.

Calf Scours

Maria takes charge of any calves that are sick, orphaned, twins, or that need any other special care. Just like any calf raiser, Maria has learned to deal with scours. Several years ago, her herd experienced a bout of acorn toxicity which led to a lot of orphaned calves that needed to be bottle fed. On top of the stress of losing so many cattle to the acorn toxicity, Maria faced a very aggressive bout of scours outbreak in the bottle calves she was caring for.

It got bad enough that Maria worked with her veterinarian and UC Davis to test fecal samples, blood samples, tissue samples, etc. But to no avail, they could never find anything wrong.  Interestingly enough, her neighbor was having similar issues with the bottle calves she was feeding. 

Calves would eat in the morning, but not the evening. In addition to scours they would get a little bloated and grind their teeth. The calves were very boney, dull, and looked malnutritioned. On her size of operation Maria typically only bottle feeds her calves for a short time before they can be grafted onto another cow. If calves lived long enough to get grafted, they seemed to take off fine. Working with the state veterinarian Maria made the decision to drop the milk replacer and feed her bottle calves whole milk from the store. The calves seemed to get better instantly. This led Maria to believe that there was something wrong with her milk replacer.

She dove into researching what the problem could be. She googled Calf Notes, BANM Guide to milk replacers, Penn States calf digestive system and many other resources and she learned a lot.  She learned about the calf’s premature digestive system and how the rumen develops.  Most importantly she learned a lot about milk replacers and ingredients that should and should not be included in them.  After about 4 months of stress and tears, all her research paid off and when a call to the company making the milk replacer she was using, verified that in fact the formula she was feeding included soy flour which is not digestible to very young calves. 

It was a terrible experience for Maria to be losing calves all those months and the way that she was treated by the milk replacer manufacturer, feed stores, and even some veterinarians was discouraging. But from that horrible experience Maria has become dedicated to educating those new to calf raising about the type of products they should be feeding their animals and how the calves digestive tract matures and develops. You can find her commenting in just about any calf raising group on Facebook, helping newbies get lined out to be successful in raising a calf.

Maria’s Calf Raising Tips

• Sometime diarrhea does mean a pathogenic scour, but Maria urges calf raisers in the event of scours to first check their milk replacer ingredients. Make sure there are no indigestible alternative proteins, and that you are measuring and mixing it correctly.
• Whole milk is a digestive system reset, if you question the quality of your milk replacer it doesn’t hurt anything to switch to whole milk from the grocery store.
• Milk replacer is higher in sugar than regular milk. If your calf seems to be having trouble with it try 2-3 Lactaid (fast dissolving tablets for humans) ground up and added to the bottle to aid in digestion.
• Scours can kill and kill quickly if the calf gets dehydrated. Even nutritional scours can kill a calf in this fashion.
• Soy isn’t digestible for young calves and contains anti-nutritional factors that will block the calf from receiving nutrients.
• Always keep a thermometer handy to help you assess if a calf is sick (over 103°F) or if it’s temperature has dropped below 101°F and you may be facing hypothermia. You need to warm hypothermic calves up before you have them drink milk.
• Baby calves have an immature digestive system. When they drink milk the esophageal groove closes and bypasses the rumen, reticulum, and omasum to take the milk directly to the abomasum where it clots and is digested.
• The rumen is not typically developed until around 6-9 months of age. We can jump start rumen development with fresh water and starter grain for our bottle calves.
• Protein is the most expensive part of a milk replacer, look for All-Milk ingredients: Dried Whey, Skimmed Milk, Casein, Buttermilk, or Dried Milk Proteins.
• The most used alternative milk proteins include: Soy Protein Concentrate, Soy Protein Isolate, Soy Flour, Protein Modified Soy Flour, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Hydrolyzed Wheat Gluten, Wheat Flour, and Wheat Gluten. Even if bags say NO SOY check the tag as they often will include Hydrolyzed Wheat Gluten.
• Milk replacer fat sources should be primarily from animal sources and at least 20% or higher.
• Milk replacer crude fiber levels should be 0.15% or lower. High fiber levels are a sign of alternative or plant-based ingredients.
• Soy Protein Concentrate and Soy Protein Isolate are two of the more digestible plant proteins for calves. But they are extracted with heat and chemical acid washes which denatures some of the protein.
• Feeding calves at higher levels of milk will result in better performance.
• Be aware of rumen drinkers. These are calves that don’t do well drinking from a bucket. Their esophageal groove may not be closing all the way and the milk may end up in the rumen.  Move these calves back to a bottle and they will usually do a lot better.
• A couple of tablespoons of Greek yogurt can be used as a probiotic.

Providing Beef for the Community

The Neilsen ranch is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. As their herd numbers have decreased, they have looked for ways to be more integrated and provide consumable products for the community. One way they have accomplished this is to sell freezer ready grass-finished beef. Maria uses this opportunity to educate consumers on where beef comes from. She makes a point to explain that even cattle finished in a feedlot and sold at the grocery store originate on family-owned ranches like hers. Although her cattle are grass finished, she explains to her customers that at some point along the way they are going to get some kind of supplement from the feed store, because Mother Nature doesn’t provide adequate nutrition at all times of the year. She even offers to take her customers on tours of the ranch so they can see their beef as it grows.

Grass finished for the Neilsen’s in the Foothill region is Mid-May through June when the grass is at peak and starting to dry. So far, the Neilsen’s have helped feed 32 families. They will be finishing out 22 head this year to sell to local families. It takes about 18 months for the Neilsen’s to grow an animal to finish. 

The near future brings a lot of changes for the Neilsen family. Originally the family invested in building a solid herd of Hereford Genetics. As the trend for black cattle has spread, they have recently resigned to buying Angus bulls which will give them Black Baldy offspring. These cattle will bring a better price when they go to the sale year. Additionally, a lot of their grazing land is leased and will soon change hands to be part of a Nature Conservancy. As they look to the future their cattle numbers will be a lot smaller, but as they diversify and finish out beef for local sale, they can set their own price and utilize their land to service the community.