The calf-rearing procedure on Richard Marshall’s farm near Omagh, Co Tyrone, is delivering results. The Dairylink participant runs 140 Holstein cows in an autumn-calving system.
Calving has progressed well, with 95 early-lactation cows going through the parlour at present. All dairy-sired calves for the autumn 2020 season are already born and the only calves arriving from mid-October onwards are beef-sired.
A summary of calf growth performance shows that autumn 2020-born calves are on target. As Table 1 indicates, calves are hitting target weights at around three, four and seven weeks old, with all growth rates exceeding 0.75kg/day.
Looking beyond average values, Figure 1 shows the performance of individual calves. The weights are close to each other, which indicates there are very few outliers and all autumn 2020-born calves are growing well.
During a virtual farm tour last week, Richard explained his calf-rearing protocols. After a cow calves on the Marshall farm, she is put into a calving gate and is milked with a portable milking unit.
“We give the udder a clean and strip out any sealers beforehand. If she gives enough milk, we will test it for colostrum quality with a refractometer and feed it to the calf. If she doesn’t, we have frozen colostrum available,” Richard said.
The aim is to feed four litres as soon as possible after birth, ideally with a bottle and teat, but a tube is used if the calf is slow to suck. The calf then goes into an individual pen for five to seven days, before going to group pens in the main calf shed.
“In the individual pen, it stays on the cow’s milk for about four days. Then it is transitioned on to powdered milk over a few days by mixing half cow’s milk and half milk replacer,” Richard explained.
Calf shed design
Two years ago, new calf-rearing facilities were completed on the Marshall farm. The new setup is a five-bay shed with five group pens, which hold 15 calves each.
“Our old shed lacked ventilation and was crowded, so they were two things that we wanted to improve. The new shed has a positive pressure tube and is open-fronted to facilitate air movement. There are wind-breaker blinds that can be brought down in a bad night if needs be,” Richard said.
There is an automatic calf feeder that covers three of the pens and the other two pens are fed manually with teat feeders. All calves also have access to straw in racks, a starter ration in meal troughs and clean water in bowl drinkers.
In the group pens, calves get ID collars and the automatic feeder gradually builds up the volume of milk offered from seven days to 21 days of age.
“It then keeps them steady at seven litres per day and the powder is mixed at a concentration of 160g/litre. At day 42, it starts to wean them and by day 65 they are off milk. It is not as easy to replicate this in the pens where calves are fed manually, but we try to do it as best we can,” Richard said.
Floor and labour
The calves lay in deep-bedded straw above a solid concrete floor and there is a 10ft-wide slatted area at the front of each pen. This allows good drainage and helps to keep the floor dry.
“The automatic calf feeder has helped to reduce the labour requirement with mixing milk, but it doesn’t do away with all the work.
“You still need to spend time in the shed looking at the calves to make sure they are sucking and thriving,” Richard concluded.
Preventing health issues
Bedding and colostrum were highlighted by local vet Maria Morris as two areas to help avoid health problems and mortalities in young calves.
“Having calves on plenty of clean, dry bedding will help make sure they don’t pick up bugs that cause scour,” Maria said during the 40-minute webinar.
Richard vaccinates dry cows for rotavirus and this immunity should pass on to calves when they get adequate colostrum.
The advice from Maria was to get four litres of good-quality colostrum into calves within six hours at the most, but ideally within two hours: “You need to get the colostrum into calves before the bugs get in.”
Maria highlighted three Qs of feeding colostrum: quality, quantity and quickly.
Pneumonia
While scour is the main cause of mortality in calves under one month old, pneumonia is the most common cause of death from one to five months of age.
As outlined earlier, Richard has taken significant steps to improve air movement in his calf accommodation. He also vaccinates calves for pneumonia at two weeks of age and gives a booster four weeks later.
“We don’t have many issues with pneumonia, but the vaccine acts as an insurance policy. If anything did creep in, the calves should have the immunity to fight the infection,” he said.
Weekly round-up
Calf rearing is ongoing on autumn-calving herds.The oldest calves have been weaned off milk.Winter breeding will begin at the end of this month.The Dairylink calf rearing webinar is available to view online at www.ifj.ie/dairylink
The calf-rearing procedure on Richard Marshall’s farm near Omagh, Co Tyrone, is delivering results. The Dairylink participant runs 140 Holstein cows in an autumn-calving system.
Calving has progressed well, with 95 early-lactation cows going through the parlour at present. All dairy-sired calves for the autumn 2020 season are already born and the only calves arriving from mid-October onwards are beef-sired.
A summary of calf growth performance shows that autumn 2020-born calves are on target. As Table 1 indicates, calves are hitting target weights at around three, four and seven weeks old, with all growth rates exceeding 0.75kg/day.
Looking beyond average values, Figure 1 shows the performance of individual calves. The weights are close to each other, which indicates there are very few outliers and all autumn 2020-born calves are growing well.
During a virtual farm tour last week, Richard explained his calf-rearing protocols. After a cow calves on the Marshall farm, she is put into a calving gate and is milked with a portable milking unit.
“We give the udder a clean and strip out any sealers beforehand. If she gives enough milk, we will test it for colostrum quality with a refractometer and feed it to the calf. If she doesn’t, we have frozen colostrum available,” Richard said.
The aim is to feed four litres as soon as possible after birth, ideally with a bottle and teat, but a tube is used if the calf is slow to suck. The calf then goes into an individual pen for five to seven days, before going to group pens in the main calf shed.
“In the individual pen, it stays on the cow’s milk for about four days. Then it is transitioned on to powdered milk over a few days by mixing half cow’s milk and half milk replacer,” Richard explained.
Calf shed design
Two years ago, new calf-rearing facilities were completed on the Marshall farm. The new setup is a five-bay shed with five group pens, which hold 15 calves each.
“Our old shed lacked ventilation and was crowded, so they were two things that we wanted to improve. The new shed has a positive pressure tube and is open-fronted to facilitate air movement. There are wind-breaker blinds that can be brought down in a bad night if needs be,” Richard said.
There is an automatic calf feeder that covers three of the pens and the other two pens are fed manually with teat feeders. All calves also have access to straw in racks, a starter ration in meal troughs and clean water in bowl drinkers.
In the group pens, calves get ID collars and the automatic feeder gradually builds up the volume of milk offered from seven days to 21 days of age.
“It then keeps them steady at seven litres per day and the powder is mixed at a concentration of 160g/litre. At day 42, it starts to wean them and by day 65 they are off milk. It is not as easy to replicate this in the pens where calves are fed manually, but we try to do it as best we can,” Richard said.
Floor and labour
The calves lay in deep-bedded straw above a solid concrete floor and there is a 10ft-wide slatted area at the front of each pen. This allows good drainage and helps to keep the floor dry.
“The automatic calf feeder has helped to reduce the labour requirement with mixing milk, but it doesn’t do away with all the work.
“You still need to spend time in the shed looking at the calves to make sure they are sucking and thriving,” Richard concluded.
Preventing health issues
Bedding and colostrum were highlighted by local vet Maria Morris as two areas to help avoid health problems and mortalities in young calves.
“Having calves on plenty of clean, dry bedding will help make sure they don’t pick up bugs that cause scour,” Maria said during the 40-minute webinar.
Richard vaccinates dry cows for rotavirus and this immunity should pass on to calves when they get adequate colostrum.
The advice from Maria was to get four litres of good-quality colostrum into calves within six hours at the most, but ideally within two hours: “You need to get the colostrum into calves before the bugs get in.”
Maria highlighted three Qs of feeding colostrum: quality, quantity and quickly.
Pneumonia
While scour is the main cause of mortality in calves under one month old, pneumonia is the most common cause of death from one to five months of age.
As outlined earlier, Richard has taken significant steps to improve air movement in his calf accommodation. He also vaccinates calves for pneumonia at two weeks of age and gives a booster four weeks later.
“We don’t have many issues with pneumonia, but the vaccine acts as an insurance policy. If anything did creep in, the calves should have the immunity to fight the infection,” he said.
Weekly round-up
Calf rearing is ongoing on autumn-calving herds.The oldest calves have been weaned off milk.Winter breeding will begin at the end of this month.The Dairylink calf rearing webinar is available to view online at www.ifj.ie/dairylink 
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