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While calving has kicked off on some farms, there is still a few weeks to go before the main flood of calves will be coming. Use the next few weeks to prepare for the busiest time of the year.
If they haven’t been done already, calf sheds should be cleaned out and disinfected now. The longer they are cleaned and disinfected before animals enter the better.
Cleaning is the first and most important step. There’s no point in disinfecting a dirty shed, as the bugs and bacteria will continue to grow and multiply.
Assess housing
The next step should be assess the amount of calf housing available. A calf will need 1.5 square metres of floor space and AHI says you should have enough space for 75% of the calves that will be born on the farm.
Adequate floor space is one thing, but an ability to feed calves quickly and effectively is another issue.
In my view, this is the biggest limiting factor on a lot of dairy farms. In an effort to address this, the Department of Agriculture has announced grant aid for calf feeding equipment.
However, mobile calf feeders are not currently eligible for the grant aid. These machines are very effective at feeding large numbers of calves quickly and effectively – as are computerised feeders, but these come at a higher cost. However, computerised calf feeders are eligible for the grant aid.
Consumables
The next thing is to order in sufficient supplies of consumables such as tags, iodine, buckets, notebooks, calving gloves and disinfectant.
Check whether calf taggers are in working order (depending on the type of tags used, some farmers will have one tagger for the tissue tag and one for the ordinary tag).
Some farmers will start to bed calving sheds and calf sheds in advance of calving, as it reduces the workload when cows start to calve.
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