When you’re raising replacement heifers, your goal is to build animals that will achieve long, healthy, productive lives. The care and nutrition they receive in their first days and weeks of life can have lasting effects on how well they fare in the longer race.

“Calf health is built on colostrum, nutrition, environment and calf health maintenance,” Dr. Sheila M. McGuirk, DVM, University of Wisconsin – Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, said. “Depending on the farm, one may be more important than another.” (Figure 1)

In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on the significance of ash in calf milk replacers (CMRs). In order to understand the importance of ash in today’s CMRs, we first need to define it.

A sound nutrition program grounded in research-proven ingredients forms the foundation for success and helps dairies achieve productivity goals.

Every dairy producer knows healthy calves require a healthy environment. This includes sound biosecurity measures and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that focus on sanitation and the elimination of disease transfer.

Calves – they’re not easy to raise, and we don’t get any payback for at least two years. They get sick easily and take abundant resources, especially time and money, to rear into productive contributors to the herd. Are they worth all this effort?

University research continues to show that proper nutrition during the first 60 days of life positively impacts age at first calving, milk production and feed efficiency.

Raising calves has been a challenge for dairy farmers for decades. Most neonatal calves on today’s dairy farms are separated from their mothers at birth and usually fed less milk solids daily than they could consume if allowed to nurse their mothers.

Labor is an important discussion point when looking at any aspect of your operation. Labor is even more significant when it comes to the manure management system you select.

The first consideration about manure is to change the mindset of manure being a waste product to being a resource. With that assumption, there are multiple variables that influence manure transportation and application considerations.