Calves are more susceptible to cold stress than older animals. This is because they have lower body fat reserves and a larger surface area to body mass ratio which causes them to lose body heat more rapidly.
In recent years there has been a significant push to calve heifers younger to become more efficient. The benefits of this have been well documented including significantly reducing rearing costs, which account as one of the largest costs on farm.
With rising costs of production, including energy, water and milk replacers, farmers may be tempted to look for potential savings when it comes to feeding calves.
Whether finding yourself in the position of considering moving from milk replacer to whole milk, or rethinking how you feed whole milk, pasteurisation must be explored.
Over the past year dairy commodity markets have shown unprecedented volatility, and we have experienced some ingredients, such as skimmed milk powder and sweet whey powder, reaching historically high levels. This coupled with increasing vegetable oil prices mean that the cost of calf milk replacer (CMR) has continued to rise, which inevitably adds cost to calf rearing systems.
Making the most of grass, planning winter forage ahead of time and focusing on heifers are three non-negotiables for a profitable suckler business this year and longer-term.
In episode seven of the Wynnstay Agri-hub podcast, Tony and I discuss what suckler beef businesses should focus on to enable profitability. Although input costs are unprecedentedly high, the current price of beef is buoyant, with good cull cow, finishing and store beef prices.
Jon Miller of Hollins Farm has been using Bloom milk replacer for the last two and a half years and says "it is by far the best milk replacer we have been on". The heifers have performed exceptionally well on it and we are having heifers calve down at 24 months yielding 34.6L with the highest achieving 42L at 43 DIM, with a first lactation pregnancy rate of 36.2% and a whole herd pregnancy rate of 29% from heifers that have been reared on Bloom, something which they are immensely proud of.
Rob Noad of Woodhouse Farm says "Stellar is delivering the growth rates we want, and calves do love consistency and routine, so the winning combination of a good milk replacer product fed accurately through an automated machine makes such a difference".
The intestine of a calf is still developing throughout the first few weeks of life, and production of digestive enzymes are increasing with age. The calf doesn’t obtain all the nutrients available in liquid feeds for a period after birth.
Whether it is beef or dairy it is important to grow calves efficiently to meet slaughter weights sooner. Standard target weights of pre-weaning weights are greater than >0.7kg/day and post-weaning DLWG of >0.8kg/day - >1.0kg/day for dairy or beef respectively.
There is no such thing as a silver bullet balancing for Amino Acids in calf milk replacer.
Amino acids are certainly the buzz word in ruminant nutrition, and rightly so. Nevertheless, will AA supplementation change the world of calf milk replacers too?
There are two overarching themes in research and ongoing farm trials:
We expect our calves to be able to cope and adapt to shifts in their nutrition throughout the pre-weaning phase, the first being from colostrum to whole milk/milk replacer and the last being from liquid to solid feed. Weaning is without doubt one of the biggest transformations the Gastrointestinal tract (GIT) will undergo and therefore understanding when and how we can best manage this juncture to avoid growth checks and impaired GIT health is important to the productivity of our calves.
