What are the most important animals on your dairy: lactating cows, dry cows, heifers or calves? The correct answer is: All of them. While lactating cows are your current source of income, calves and heifers are your future source of income.

The successful raising of the neonatal calf can be one of the most rewarding jobs on the dairy, or it can be one of the most challenging, costly and frustrating.

The calves you are raising today represent the future of your herd. “It takes a community to raise a child.” The same holds true for raising a calf.

As temperatures plummet, both people and animals exposed to the cold are at risk for frostbite. According to the Center for Disease Control, frostbite is an injury to the body caused by freezing. When conditions are right, this can happen within just minutes of exposure to the elements.

Maintaining a healthy herd from birth until cow retirement benefits a dairy. A healthy animal can lead to lower maintenance and treatment costs, and even increased milk productivity.

You don’t need to look far in mainstream life to see evidence of concern regarding antibiotic resistance. It seems every week, a new fast-food chain touts its products are “raised without antibiotics,” and media stories about antibiotic resistance in human health appear just as regularly.

The goal of any nursery calf program should be to strike a balance between maximizing health and growth during the first half of the nursery phase and building a fully functional rumen during the second half.

Raising a calf to become a high-producing cow is critical to a herd’s future. To help dairy producers in their quest to develop more productive animals, the last decade of industry and university research has explored the connection between calf nutrition and lactation performance.

Editor’s note: This article is part three in a three-part series on evaluating your hygiene protocols. Visit Are you saving money with hygiene? to read part 1 and 5 steps to perfect cleanliness to read part 2.

Holsteins, Jerseys and Milking Shorthorns? When Don Crawley came back to Crawley’s Valley View Farms after World War II, the farm had mostly Jerseys, which were great as milk cows. However, he wanted a milk cow where the bull calf and cull cow were worth more, so he became interested in Milking Shorthorns.