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One of the best ways to ensure a successful colostrum-management program is by testing colostrum on-farm and verifying passive transfer of immunity. It can be easy, affordable, and the health and productivity of our calves are worth the effort.
Colostrum is good for calves. It is the only way we transfer the cow’s immunity to the calf at birth.
Having good-quality colostrum is why many dairies have gone to monitoring the quality of their colostrum to make sure they are providing their newborn calves with the highest-quality product they can.
I recently received an email from a veterinarian in an Asian country who just started working with a large commercial dairy.
On this farm, at the time of the email, there were to be more than 500 calves born in the next three months, most of which were heifers (the farm uses sexed semen).
Most nearly everyone I discuss calf raising with will tell me that it’s one of the most challenging jobs on the dairy.
When things aren’t going well – namely, calves are sick and mortality rates are unacceptably high – calf raising is frustrating, to say the least.
“That’s a lot of expensive feed.” This is a common initial reaction to feeding calves a higher plane of nutrition.
This approach to raising calves incorporates more nutrient-dense milk rations fed at a higher level to meet their needs early in life.
Quality calves are the future investment of every dairy operation, but raising them until they are ready to put milk in the tank is no easy task.
One of the founding principles of the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association is that growers can help one another through exchanging ideas and information.
Historically, heifer programs have been a source of widely varied growth patterns. Dairy producers that could produce more heifers than needed generated additional revenue by selling extra heifers for a premium.
In December 2011, Brett Barlass of Yosemite Dairy in California decided to begin raising the calves on the dairy rather than having them custom-raised. He detailed the challenges of dealing with CAFO regulations, hiring additional employees and setting up protocols.
Good calf and heifer management is essential for any dairy or heifer-growing operation. Everything producers and calf growers do, from colostrum to calving, affects the health of their heifers along with the bottom line of their business.
Calves are a genetic investment in the future. Every year producers spend time and money to make genetic selections designed to ensure a calf grows up to be an asset to any operation.
These investments in the calves’ future must still be backed by solid calf management practices to be effective in the long run.
“Measure what you want to manage” describes a growing trend for more data analysis for operation improvement.
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