Properly storing, handling and mixing milk replacer not only helps the product retain its quality, it also ensures calves are consistently fed. Although it seems that mixing powder and water is simple, many issues can occur that impact both powder quality and animal performance.

Over the last 10 years, the dairy industry has shown an increased interest in early life feeding programs for calves, spurred in part by several studies and meta-analyses illustrating the potential effect of greater pre-weaning average daily gain on future milk production.

Raising replacement heifers is the second-greatest cost on a dairy farm, and these animals will dictate the future success of the enterprise. To ensure future productive success, many considerations should be evaluated in terms of the liquid diet fed to young pre-weaned calves, especially when the liquid diet consists of whole or waste milk.

Feeding calves high rates of milk replacer is common practice in many parts of the U.S. High milk replacer feeding rates have resulted in increased pre-weaning average daily gain (ADG). Improved feed efficiency has also been observed, most likely due to the greater digestibility of liquid feed compared to calf starter.

Recently, interest has increased in feeding high levels of milk replacer to calves as research has indicted that greater levels of milk replacer increase pre-weaning average daily gain and future milk production.

Raising replacement heifers is the second-highest cost to a dairy enterprise, making up nearly 20 percent of production costs. More than 15 percent of that total cost is incurred during the first two months of life, when milk replacer makes up a large portion of nutrient intake.