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Food, water, shelter, clothes and sleep are all things we take for granted. Without any of these basic things, life itself becomes difficult for us, if not impossible. The basic needs of calves are not much different than ours.
Simply put, three basic things are required: an ample supply of draft-free fresh air, a dry comfortable rest area and sufficient food and water to meet their energy requirements. To be successful in ventilating calf barns, we must ensure all three basic needs are covered.
In this new series of articles from Progressive Dairyman, three forward-thinking operations share protocols and lessons learned as well as what’s on the horizon. The first article in this series focuses on calf and heifer raising. Watch your mailboxes in 2013 for future discussions featuring A.I. and breeding decisions, feed and nutrition management and manure handling.
Calves are essential to a dairy operation, as they represent the future of the herd and its income. They are also the most vulnerable segment of a herd, highly susceptible to disease with the highest mortality rate among dairy cattle in their first eight weeks of life.
With calves serving as the cornerstone of any successful dairy, every effort should be made to keep them protected and healthy. For the best care of calves, there are four main areas to consider.
Group housing in the calf barn has become an efficient way to house and manage dairy calves. Since our Grober Young Animal Development Center opened its doors in 2009, there has been a dedicated effort to demonstrating the benefits of raising these young animals in groups; some of those benefits include improved growth performance during weaning and post-weaning.
Those particular benefits were uncovered in calves grouped right from the start. However, could there an advantage to housing calves individually to start out and then moving them into a group setting to maximize performance and also satisfy their innate need to socialize?
There’s been lots of discussion over the years as to what’s the best way to feed the neonatal calf. The calf-raising program on a dairy farm is a critical cog in the long-term profitability of that dairy. Replacement heifer calves represent the future of the herd both in productivity and genetics.
Yet the calf-raising program is often looked upon with varying degrees of displeasure. It’s labor-intensive and, especially when overrun with health issues, can be challenging and discouraging. When other problems arise on the farm during the day, the calves have to wait their turn.
In the September 1 issue of Progressive Dairyman, we reached out to calf researchers and asked them to share their thoughts on the future of automatic calf feeding.
For this issue, we’ve invited company representatives to talk about their automatic calf feeding offerings.
Arie Roeloffs comes from a family that has been dairying for generations. Southfield Dairy in Wendell, Idaho, began milking in 1992. They have almost 5,200 head and raise all of their own calves, with almost 700 on a bottle. They also farm 5,500 acres, growing their own corn. We asked Roeloffs what the 5 things were that he can’t live without when it comes to calf raising.
Cow-centered dairy farms include animal- and worker-friendly procedures and facilities for raising dairy replacements from birth to pre-calving.
They provide clean, dry and comfortable living spaces for these important animals and accommodate non-uniform calving rates and the changing animal needs based on age, weight, health and management.
A variety of housing types and arrangements can be used to assemble a productive replacement raising system including:
There are many things dairy producers do every day to keep cows healthy and productive, but there may be nothing more important than focusing on the first two hours when a calf is born.
A recent article in the Journal of Dairy Science evaluated factors affecting passive transfer in heifer calves and how this related to the time of first insemination. Their findings continue to tell us how important colostrum and the transfer of immunity is to a calf’s life.
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