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The 2014 Dairy Calf & Heifer Association Conference featured two panel discussions. In this excerpt, hear from JP Hall, Halls Calf Ranch; Mike Larson, Larson Acres; and Joel Sutter, Fertile Ridge Dairy, as they talk about challenges in calf-raising and new technologies.
Q. What challenges do you face when it comes to calf housing and health on your farms?
HALL: One of our biggest chores is communication between us and our clients, and that’s because we don’t have control over how that calf is taken care of the first 12 hours of birth.
Hot weather and flies tend to go hand-in-hand, but there are measures you can take to limit fly populations in the summer months.
Pre-weaned calves are especially susceptible to the detrimental effects of flies because they often live in confined spaces and cannot escape a fly-infested environment.
Research continues to show that prenatal stress can affect metabolism of the offspring. This appears to hold true for many different species of animals including cattle. One stress that consistently affects pregnant dairy cows is heat stress.
We know that heat stress can impair a cow’s reproduction and depress milk production. However, effects on calves – either before or after calving – are less well-defined.
Cow-calf separation is embedded into the rhythm of life on most dairy farms, so much so that many people in the industry may not have thought much about why it’s done, or more pointedly, questioned whether it should be done.
But with rising concern over the animal management practices in the dairy industry, we suggest that the dairy industry would benefit by engaging with consumers about this and other contentious practices.
When you look at the rising cost of replacement heifers, keeping calves healthy and productive before and after arrival is critical to the dairy’s bottom line. Too many calves die from scours each year, which is an expensive problem for dairy producers.
According to the National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) Dairy 2007 study, diarrhea and other digestive problems accounted for more than 56 percent of pre-weaned heifer deaths.
Heat stress and its effect on calves is not fully understood, but we do know that calves are stressed in high temperatures and humidity. These effects can be severe, and it is up to the people working with the calves to recognize the signs of heat stress and take appropriate action to prevent problems from occurring.
John and Debbie Feldpausch of Westphalia, Michigan, manage and operate a progressive calf-raising facility using some of the newest technology in the business. Their success has been due to their years of experience and dedication to healthy calves.
As winter fades into spring, calves face a changing climate. Dairy producers can reduce the stress of the impending warm weather by implementing simple strategies to their daily calf care regiment.
Dairy replacement feeding and management systems have undergone major evolution in the last 25 to 30 years. As herd sizes increased, individual hutches were introduced to protect calves from contaminated and overcrowded environments.
Recently, higher levels of milk feeding are recommended to promote early growth, and now some farmers are adopting extended suckling until calves are weaned.
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