Dairy farrming practices

[karenmw460]

I have been trying to find some information about dairy farming practices in Thailand through google (no success) and contacting the big local dairy producers (no responses), so I was wondering if anyone here could help.

I would like to ask what the practices are with regard to calves - particularly male calves - are they slaughtered soon after birth or are the raised as beef cattle ? 

Thanks in advance 

[kickstart]

Freisan bull calves, a lot of depends, the big one is the price of the bull calves,  where I am most are sold at 2-3 days old, the biggest buyer, is a family that will feed them up for 2-3 months then they are shipped up to Chiang Mai for the Barbeque trade ,the best price is around the New Year  and Songkram  festivals prices farmers  can get up too 1200 baht/calf ,but normally about 800-1000baht /head .

Now a bull calf is only  worth about 3-400 baht (last month farmers made more money selling the placenta, one time 150 baht /kg  than the bull calf),now a lot of dairy farmers are keeping one or two back, feeding them on antibiotic milk  for a few months, feed them up to 10-12 months and sell them on ,they will get about 10-12000 baht /head ,maybe less now beef prices have dropped back now about 90-100baht /kg .

Some farmers will sell they beef calves on the other farmers who will rear them up to a year old, and sell them, very few will fatten them up to 2-year-old beef, most do not have the cash flow to do a fattening enterprise, too bigger investment, and not a lot of money to be made .

One dairy farm does it , he has a monthly milk cheque, to help his cash flow. another farmer is a big seller of Brewers grains, and now Ovaltine waist, his cattle soon get fat feed is just cost price for him.

[karenmw460]

Thank you so much for such an informative answer. I googled for hours and couldn’t come up with that information 

[kickstart]

I should have added, this is in my area, a big dairy cow area,I would say other big cow areas could well do something different, but very few dairy farmers will keep bull calves.

Most Thai farmers rear they cows on the USA way, cows kept in yards the whole time and feed is brought to them, and most do not have shed space or feed resources to rear bull calves, as I said a lot of farmers will keep back 1-2 bull calves ,some find that there bull calf turns out to be a good animal  and there will keep him back as a stock bull. 

When the price is high, say  1000 baht for a 2-day old calf is just too tempting and he will soon get sold.