Especially in northern America, a long tradition has been to keep calves in individual outdoor hutches or to keep them in pens in a calf barn. It is an easy system to instruct employees and to observe calves. You see every time if a calf comes to drink milk, and calf health is easier to maintain when young animals are separated from each other. Due to the increase of automatic calf feeding systems, interest in group housing has also increased. Pressure from consumers to see calves raised in groups is also at play. How can we transition from single housing to group housing?

Heat stress is a crucial concern when it comes to lactating dairy cattle, both from a welfare and economic standpoint on our dairy farms. Much research has been conducted to elucidate the effects of heat stress on lactating cows and to develop effective heat abatement strategies.

Winter always seems to sneak up on us before we know it. The amount of daylight gets shorter and shorter and the temperature gets colder and colder. We have a million things on our mind and prepping the calf facility might have fallen to the bottom of the to-do list.

Pair raising calves is increasing in popularity in the North American dairy industry, where some welfare and productivity benefits have been consistently shown in recent studies.

Six percent of Holstein bull calves in the U.S. never make it to the feedlot. That’s because their path is diverted to become veal.

Pair housing (or small groups of up to four calves) for pre-weaned calves is increasing in popularity due to the myriad of benefits for calf welfare compared to individual housing.

Conventional wisdom has told us we should house dairy calves individually to prevent nose-to-nose contact and control spread of disease. Calf hutches have been viewed as the “gold standard” for calf raising.