By
in
on October 15, 2024 Preweaned calves and technology ?
Tremendous advances in the use of technology to better manage dairy cattle, cropping and other areas of dairy farming have recently been featured in the popular press. What about technology in calf management? How has calf management changed in the past 5 – 10 years?? For many years, the number of heifer calves born has been a boom or bust depending on which sperm (x or y) were successful in fertilizing the egg! However, consider the impact of the use of sexed semen and genomics on the calf enterprise. Until just recently, it was not profitable to raise all heifer calves to breeding age or calving and sell them. Using the concept of genomics, lower ranking females in the herd have been bred to beef sires resulting in a new profit center for many farms. Finally, we are learning to appreciate that the better we raise our heifer calves (more milk or milk replacer) the healthier they are, and they produce more milk during their first and later lactations. There is a greater economic incentive for improved calf management! Minimizing cost/day should not be the goal!
How do we use technology to better manage the calf enterprise for long term profitability? One key to making successful management decisions is to have objective, timely information on calves. Good calf managers need to know what happened yesterday or over the past week or two to make timely decisions that have a significant impact on success. Unfortunately, calf management has been a lower ranking priority for many dairy businesses. What information is needed for calf management decision making?
- Morbidity – Date, disease, treatment and retreatment
- Serum proteins for samples obtained between 2 and 5 days of life. Is the colostrum program successful?
- Growth – birth and weaning weights (average daily gain). This is a new one! How do we know our feeding program meets their nutrient requirements for growth
- Calf behavior – activity, attitude (See the Wisconsin Scoring System https://www.vetmed.wisc.edu/fapm/svm-dairy-apps/calf-health-scorer-chs/ )
- Feeding behavior – consumption, drinking speed, number of meals, meal size?
- Mortality during the first 14 and the first 60 days of life.
Some of these items are more important than others and many of them are infrequently recorded. On many farms, this information may be hand recorded in a book, on a board in the calf room, or not at all. Let’s approach calf management with the same mindset as we use for managing the lactating dairy herd.
How can technology assist with calves? Hand recorded records are frequently unreadable and are “trapped” on paper until someone enters the information into a database. This may occur several days later and errors in transcription are not uncommon.
Several dairy record keeping systems now enable calf personnel to enter information on a cell phone or tablet. This greatly reduces the chance for transcription errors and increases the timeliness and accessibility to this information for anyone with the proper security clearances. Once the calf has initially been identified with an RFID tag the use of a “wand” permits electronic identification of the calf and enables rapid entry of desired events as they happen.
The manager can then gain rapid access to the information and develop reports which fit their management preferences. Table 1 shows a sample report developed from a dairy calf enterprise database.
The report can be generated for any given time and the information has little “lag” which is the time between the event and when the event has an influence on animal performance. This is one key to success: Entry into the database when the event occurs and presentation of the information in a timely decision making format.
Robotic technology in calf management.
This technology is not just for milking cows! Calf autofeeders were first developed nearly 50 years ago. As with robotics milking systems the technology involved with calf feeders has advanced considerably. Autofeeders may be adapted to individually housed calves with the calf rail or in group housed systems (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Some systems have been more widely used and allow feeding group housed calves.
Some examples of the technology available in autofeeder systems includes :
Feeding plans: Individually housed calves in traditional systems are commonly fed two or three times daily which is not “biologically” normal. Feeding plans can specify availability of feed, amount per day, maximum amount per meal, interval between meals, solids level, mixture of milk and milk replacer at various ages. This enables feeding more milk or milk replacer during early life (where starter intake is low) in smaller more frequent meals. Weaning is achieved by reducing the milk intake more gradually. As a result, this technology enables the feeding program to “mimic” what occurs naturally when calves nurse their dams.
Feeding behavior: Scientists at several research institutions have utilized key items such as drinking speed and consumption patterns to more successfully detect disease earlier and to monitor the impact of treatment on recovery. Typically, drinking speed is one of the most useful indicators of the onset of respiratory and digestive disease with some studies showing detection days before the calf feeding personnel might treat them (Figure 3).
Example screens from two different systems showing intake and drinking speeds.
Animal behavior: Typically, most autofeeder systems are used in group housing systems where calves are added to groups between 2 to 14 days of life. Time spent resting or moving in the pen, consuming water, or calf starter is also useful in disease detection. Research has shown that group or pair housed calves behave differently than those housing individually. They are more adaptable to new feeds and environments initially and throughout their lives. One notices that group housed calves begin consuming starter earlier, are calmer and since they have been housed in groups pre weaning, are better prepared for post weaning systems. Rarely, does one seen the “post weaning” slump commonly observed in calves fed liberal amounts of milk individually followed by 1x /day feeding to stimulate weaning and starter intake. These benefits have been documented and are the basis for animal care legislation in several countries. One also should consider the question, are group-housed calves fed with autofeeder systems more well suited to robotic milking systems later in life?
Accessibility of data: As many farms have internet access, the dairy business can provide access to this information to consultants and veterinarians in “real” time. I have used this technology in providing consulting advice to dairy businesses remotely anywhere in the world.
Labor effectiveness and efficiency: Feeding calves in hutch systems or individual pens indoors is labor intensive and frequently provides an environment not well suited to labor satisfaction. As a result, labor assigned to calf management is not a high priority on farms. High levels of employee turnover are not uncommon, especially during the winter in northern dairies or in the summer in the far west and south. Typically, dairy businesses transitioning to autofeeder systems note that they employ and calf “manager” rather than a calf “feeder”. These are individuals who utilize data to make decisions, are more technically inclined. Labor efficiency has increased and the dairy business may find that they are employing fewer, more management oriented personnel who enjoy their work which results in less employee turnover.
Why hasn’t technology been more widely adapted in the calf enterprise? Probably one of the biggest deterrents to technology being more widely adopted for calves has been that the goal of many dairy businesses is to reduce the daily cost of calf programs rather than focus on a better return on investment. The concept of making a major capital investment in a system which may not result in economic returns for several years is challenging. Another is that we are bound by tradition! How long has it taken for farms to transition to improved early nutrition by feeding more milk? Autofeeders provide the opportunity to manage calves in a more biologically normal manner by feeding more milk and development of housing systems which promote “social” and well as nutritional management. Technology provides the opportunity to better manage the preweaned calf to capture it’s biological potential.
