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The dry period presents a key time frame to incorporate prevention points that not only guard cow health, but also the health of their offspring against the number one cause of neonatal calf deaths.
Especially in northern America, a long tradition has been to keep calves in individual outdoor hutches or to keep them in pens in a calf barn. It is an easy system to instruct employees and to observe calves. You see every time if a calf comes to drink milk, and calf health is easier to maintain when young animals are separated from each other. Due to the increase of automatic calf feeding systems, interest in group housing has also increased. Pressure from consumers to see calves raised in groups is also at play. How can we transition from single housing to group housing?
As more research is being done on calf health, it is being discovered that common calf management practices that introduce antibiotics during critical development periods might be doing more harm than good.
How much does it cost to raise a heifer from birth to first calving? The costs associated with raising heifers are often overlooked when analyzing expenses on dairy farms.
Just as more is less, bigger is not always better when it comes to the growth and development of dairy heifers. The nature and growth of dairy cattle has vastly changed from decade to decade, and as traits have been genomically bred out of cattle, often the idea of “bigger equals better,” has become a misjudged trend.
Colostrum is the most important thing a producer can give a newborn calf. Ideally, it should be fed within the first hour of life. What happens during the calf’s first hour of life will have the biggest impact on the animal, even through lactation. It is a critical window that will determine if that calf will live and be a productive member of the dairy.
Would it surprise you that a critical difference between success and failure in raising calves is the attitude of the people taking care of the calves? How we view the calves and how we view our time are critical to success of the calf operation because they impact calf performance.
I doubt that anyone would deny we are living in an age of disruption. Successful dairy managers do not just “respond” to the current situation; they anticipate the impact of future “disruptors” and are proactive. Strict adherence to what has been successful in the past may mean “failure” in the future.
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