Colostrum is a hot topic in calf rearing and rightly so. Feeding 10% of the calf’s bodyweight in high-quality colostrum as quickly as we can ensures the greatest level of Ig absorption. However, the biological role of colostrum extends far beyond the transfer of immunity.
Many farmers prefer to use whole milk to feed their calves. Some find it more convenient, others believe it to be a more natural product that is best suited to the calf – nature’s original liquid feed strategy.
Avoid the risks of exceeding nutrient tolerance. The graph shows at what level calves reach their nutrient tolerance for lactose. The red line represents a typical high plane of nutrition using a typical calf milk replacer where, especially early in life, there is a risk of exceeding lactose tolerance, leading to nutritional diarrhoea.
The calves natural feeding behaviour is to suckle off their dam little and often like an ad-lib system. Suckled calves would have around 10/15L of milk a day which is always fresh and warm, giving them more than 1.5kg of dry matter per day from milk. This is coupled with lower solid feed concentration intake and gradual rumen development.
An increasing number of studies are suggesting we should be feeding our jersey cattle and smaller stature calves differently to holsteins and larger breeds. As crossbreeding within the dairy industry is becoming more popular, the number of smaller stature calves is increasing.
Unfortunately, we cannot shy away from increasing feed costs but we can pay less attention to daily feed costs or cost per ton and more attention on costs per kg daily live weight gain.
Nutrients are valuable, whether this is through milk replacer, starter feed, minerals or forage, they all come at a cost!
Reduced calving age from one year to the next may suggest improved calf and heifer rearing; however it is months later when we can make these assumptions. If a heifer is first served at 18 months old, it can be assumed that there are improvements to be made to allow future heifers to reach service weight earlier. But it is difficult at this point to then determine at which stage of rearing that this heifer didn’t meet her targets and fell behind.
If we dried whole milk to a powder the protein level would sit at an average of around 24% and the fat level 30%. At 23% protein and 27% oil our new Elixir+ is as close as it gets!
When selecting a feeding programme for your calves there are pros and cons to consider before making the move: disease risk, nutrient intake for growth performance, and economics. You may think that pasteurisation is the best option for your system and so it may be, but it might be worth reading on to consider some of the myths of pasteurising.
Colostrum is a concentrated source of nutrients, which includes fats, proteins, Immunoglobulins such as Immunoglobulin G (IgG), carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Ensuring that a newborn calf gets the correct amount of good quality colostrum as soon as possible after birth is paramount to produce a healthy calf.
