Before anything else can happen, the newborn calf requires immediate “best care” to get a great start in life.

Calves are the future of your dairy. Using the tools available to build a calf’s immunity within the first days and weeks of life can help set them up for a lifetime of production. Building an effective vaccination protocol can help calves through times of stress and help them be more resistant to the harmful pathogens encountered throughout life.

Think of calf rumen development as a journey. Calves transition through nutritional stages – from milk to starter and grower to TMR. What’s being fed at each of those stages impacts rumen development.

The goal of a properly designed ventilation system should be to provide clean, fresh air at all times for healthy calf development.

“There’s always something to learn,” Sam Gardner, co-owner and farm manager of Gardner Heifers in Huddleston, Virginia, says. “If you’re going to be involved in any industry, you really need to be out on the forefront trying to learn what’s new. Like anything, if you get stuck in how it was always done in the past, and you’re not looking to see what’s out ahead of you, then you’re going to get left behind.”

Nathan Oakman from Deer Run Dairy in Adams, New York, has come up with a cost-effective solution for drying off and warming up baby calves in cold weather.

When calves are fed twice a day and housed in individual pens or hutches, the morning feeder is greeted by loud bawling of calves anxiously awaiting their morning meal. It may have been more than 12 hours since their last meal of 2 quarts of milk or milk replacer.

Water – which makes up 86 percent of a newborn calf’s bodyweight – is the most important nutrient for dairy calves, but it is often overlooked.

Nobody would buy the cheapest lumber, hire the cheapest carpenters who use the cheapest tools but still expect to have the finest cabinetry built.

Raising replacement heifers is the second-highest cost to a dairy enterprise, making up nearly 20 percent of production costs. More than 15 percent of that total cost is incurred during the first two months of life, when milk replacer makes up a large portion of nutrient intake.