Water is important! Often we pay attention to small details in our feeding management of calves and overlook “simple” things of great importance! This is the case with water, regardless of whether you manage calves in individual pens or group housing. The fundamental recommendation is simple. Provide plenty of fresh, clean water at all times […]
Keep it clean!! Our discussions pertaining to calf management frequently focus on nutrition, milk or milk replacer, colostrum, vaccinations, feed additives……. Rarely do we consider the impact of hygiene on our success in raising calves. For this post, let’s consider the impact of hygiene on calf health and growth. Calving environment – While in utero […]
When is the best time to introduce calves to the autofeeder? There are two views to consider when making this decision. Traditionally it’s been highly recommended to keep calves housed individually for health reasons. Typically, calves have some mild scours sometime during the first 10 days of life, likely due to delays in development of […]
The Merging of Sustainability and Calf Management *Post contributed by Maureen Hanson How can calf management systems survive, thrive, and co-exist with other industries and the environment in the future? Their sustainability was addressed by number of speakers at the recent 2023 Smart Calf Rearing Conference in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The Merging of Sustainability and Calf […]
What have “autofeeders” taught me about feeding dairy calves? Most of us that have fed calves have a similar impression of “what’s normal” for feeding calves and calf behavior. What was “normal”? We fed them twice a day. We fed two quarts (liters) per feeding. We did this because milk or milk replacer was expensive […]
Hi, I’m Dr. Bob James… welcome back. As we kick off the calf blog, I want to let you know a bit about the content and what format we will use over the next year. Read more…