Produção de vitelos

Abstract

In the countries with high milk production, like in Europe and the United States of America, in the past 30 to 40 years, the abundance of male dairy calves from the big herds have encouraged the farmers to produce veal meat. Without discarding these animals, it is possible to produce a highly-demanded product for the market, however, with few suppliers, besides attending to the demand of consumption of low-cholesterol meat. It also opens the producers to a new market, till now not explored, providing an option of income to the dairy producers of many regions of the world, including Brazil. To make economically viable to raise dairy calves to produce veal, many aspects must be controlled. Maybe the first is to buy animals well immune by the ingestion of colostrums in the first hours of life, decreasing the mortality and the morbidity. Second, the substitution of milk for a commercial substitute during the initial phase of life, that is the most delicate and expensive one of the process, to minimize the costs of the producer.