Unlock the full potential of your calves | Ep. 126

Are you feeding your calves enough to unlock their full potential?

In this episode, you’ll hear what the latest research says about early calf nutrition, and why feeding more milk before weaning can help your heifers hit growth targets sooner and produce more milk later. 

You’ll also hear from Canterbury farmer Cam Henderson, who’s made the shift to ad-lib feeding. He shares what’s changed, what surprised him, and how the costs stacked up. 

But this isn’t just about ad-lib systems. DairyNZ’s senior animal care specialist Penny Timmer-Arends shares other feeding approaches that achieve similar results. She discusses the principles behind calf growth, and how to weigh up the trade-offs and choose what fits your farm. You’ll also hear about the risks and how to manage them.

Download the Calf Rearing guide

Feeding milk to calves | DairyNZ

Read more:

‘Feeding more often feels natural and important to me’ | DairyNZ

Good as gold: the calves who feed themselves | DairyNZ

Laying the right foundation | DairyNZ

Inside Dairy - More milk, healthier calves, stronger heifers | DairyNZ 

Have feedback or ideas for future episodes? Email us at talkingdairy@dairynz.co.nz

Connect with DairyNZ

Stay up to date with advice, latest research, tools and resources. Read, browse, scroll, listen, or be there in person. Visit dairynz.co.nz/get-connected 

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Kioda and welcome to Talking Dairy. I'm your host Jack McGowan from DairyNZ. It's great to have you with us. Today we're talking about calf rearing and a question many farmers are revisiting. Should we be feeding calves more milk more often? Farmers who've changed their approach are now seeing healthier calves, stronger growth rates, and heifers hitting targets earlier, with potential gains later on in the VAT. I know there'll be questions about risks and costs, so in this episode we've got the latest research on the topic and a farmer who's recently made the change to talk about what's worked and whether it's stacked up. Joining me are Penny Timmer Ahrens, Senior Animal Care Specialist at Dairy Z and Cameron Henderson, Deputy Chair of the Dairy NZ Board, and a dairy farmer who recently switched to ad lib feeding for calves. Let's get into it. Tina Kurua, welcome back to Talking Dairy, both of you. Thanks, Jack.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Now, since you've been on before, we can jump straight into the topic of the day. We'll

The science: early growth drives lifetime performance

SPEAKER_00 1:00

start with you, Penny. There's been a lot of discussion lately about feeding calves more milk more often. From the latest research, what do we now know about why early nutrition matters so much?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

So the research is increasingly showing the really clear link between average daily weight gain pre-weaning and first lactation milk yield. A lot of this evidence is from overseas research, so calves that are maybe raised in an indoor setting. But the kind of physiological reasons that underlie it is faster mammary gland tissue development in those first sort of three, four months pre-weaning and metabolic programming. You're kind of switching them on with their higher weight gain, that they're a more efficient animal. And so while a lot of that is overseas, there's also more New Zealand research coming through. So BSI, formerly ag research, have done a lot of work studying heifers over seven years, so quite a lengthy trial, and they've found that same results around the mammary tissue development and first lactation milk yield. So, yep, pulling from overseas, but there's some New Zealand evidence in there as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Okay, thank you.

Old system vs new thinking

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Now many farmers will be thinking back to the pokawa research from the late 90s and early 2000s. That was about once-a day feeding and low milk volumes and early weaning. That work shaped a lot of our systems. How do we square that up with what you're saying now?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yep, so those sort of Pokawa trials on that kind of restricted volume feeding definitely optimized for labor efficiency and lower milk. Um, if you can get them onto meal sooner, it's cheaper. So there's some cost benefits in there. That was really designed for raising dairy beef calves. So that future milk production wasn't a factor. It was really just how can you get that calf at four days of age and get it to 100 kilos really efficiently. Okay.

Cam’s system and why he changed

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Now, Cam, people might know you as the deputy chair of Dairy and Z Board, but like many of us, you're also a dairy farmer. Tell us a bit about your farming operation.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

So we're farming just south of Oxford, North Canterbury. We arrived here back in 2011, converted an old cheap farm back then, and the farms now growing were about 220 hectares effective, irrigated, milking about 750 cows, predominantly crossbred, uh, about F10, F12 range, and uh doing about 480 milk solids a cow from a about a 500 kilo cow. Running a fairly standard cannery system, uh we feed about 800 kilos to a ton per cow wintering off. So, yeah, very, very sort of standard system through four cannery operation.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Cam, you've recently made a change to the way you rear your calves. Can you tell us a bit about your previous system and what prompted you to make a change?

SPEAKER_02 3:42

We've

Moving to ad-lib feeding

SPEAKER_02 3:43

really followed, they're gonna probably call it a standard Canterbury system ever since we converted, really. It's the system that I learned coming down to Canterbury twice a day feeding with colostrum for the first sort of four or five days, and then switching almost as quickly as possible across to once a day feeding five litres a day more or less, through to our crossberry cubs of sort of 90 kilos, and then wetting them off. So partly that was just around the system that we knew worked, relatively low risk. Lots of other farmers had done it. It was relatively low labour, not having to feed carbs twice a day, given, you know, a fairly busy spring period. And we got reasonably good results out of that. You know, we we tended to track the minor live weight targets fairly closely, plus or minus a couple of kilos. So, in the absence of probably any other comparison at the time, it seemed to deliver good results. We've had, you know, healthy heifers, uh, more or less what most farmers do. Why do we look at changing, probably looking at some of these systems that have implemented these uh automatic car feeders and thought, oh, this is great. I've got an engineering background, I love the idea of robotics and automation and a bit of labor saving on that. So I'd investigated that, but um found the prices pretty eye-watering, to be honest, for our system. And and the technology, given where our sheds are and the paddocks are, really wasn't going to fit that well. So sort of thought, oh, you know, how how can we achieve some of these really good weight gains that those systems are achieving, but without all the capital required. So we thought, oh, let's have a go at ad lib feeding. So yeah, last season was our our first go at it, and um yeah, we've had some pretty good results.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, okay. So

Intake, behaviour and immediate impacts

SPEAKER_00 5:13

what have you noticed in terms of results and also what's been different about the calves?

SPEAKER_02 5:18

So perhaps I can sort of talk through what we did. We've had pens of 20 calves traditionally, and we we decided to continue with that just as we were trialing things. So we instead of putting in a feeder once a day, we'd have a 200-litre drum uh with some teats in the side and tubes sort of running down into the bottom of the drum. And we just kept that topped up. So we were doing that twice a day uh this past season, and um finding that the calves were drinking substantially more than what we've been feeding them in the past, upwards of probably eight to ten litres on average on cold days, uh up to twelve litres a day. So they probably highlighted that we were underfeeding the calves in terms of what they were potentially able to drink based on past experience.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

How long did it take a pen of calves to get up to that kind of volume?

SPEAKER_02 6:04

It's pretty quick. Yeah, within a week, they were easily drinking eight to ten litres a day. And as I say, a little bit weather related. We did notice a drop-off in obviously pellets and other feed that was going in all the way through, as you'd sort of expect, but they did eat fibre as well, so it's not as if feeding them ad lib milk meant that they didn't eat anything else, they were still eating other feed. And we found that they um yeah, they adapted to it really quickly. I guess it's probably a more natural environment for them being able to access milk all day round. And some of the benefits, so probably immediately we found that um, you know, for those that arrive calf rearing in the morning, particularly on a once-a-day system, you arrive down there in the morning and they're all mowing and bleating at you and hungry. Um, you come down and it's just silence, like they're all just sitting on the ground, happy, just no noise, happy calves, which was quite satisfying to see. So that really helped. There was definitely a labor saving and topping up the containers once or twice a day, you're not having to move feeders around, stand calves up, stand there while you're watching them drink and then

Health checks and management challenges

SPEAKER_02 7:02

move to the next pen. You could you could essentially feed the whole lot all at once and then just watch them all and just do your assessments on animal health. That worked out really well. And that's probably the one of the key lessons or areas that we're keen to discuss with other people that are trialling it around, just assessing that calf health. Because you traditionally you put the feeder in, they all jump up and run along. It was easy to spot when something was going wrong because the calf wouldn't get up and drink. So, how do you do that? If they're all lying down, how do you know? Are they discontent? Are they sick? It is a hard comparison. So we've got some learnings to do there. But look, the weight gain's been fantastic. We uh weaned about three weeks early, and the weight gain has just continued on. So um, yeah, there's been good some some good lessons out of that, some key issues that I think we need to refine. But the overall result is just phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

So, not going back to once-a-day feeding then, Cam?

SPEAKER_02 7:49

No, no, no. This has definitely been a one-way journey and the calf wearer is um tends to rule that roost. So she's keen to keep going that direction. So um with some refinement and probably talking to a number of other farmers that are trialing it, as I say, fine-tuning, particularly that I call it a transition period, but the the winningslash transition out of ad lib off milk entirely is just so critical that talking to other farmers that have learned some hard lessons that way, that you know, winning out of ad lib, if you don't help with that rumen development through that transition period, um you can really crash some calves off and quite often that they'll actually go backwards and your once-a-day calves will probably pass them in terms of weight gain. So that that rumen development at the end of the ad lib process is just super critical.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Okay. I want

The critical piece: transitioning off ad-lib

SPEAKER_00 8:35

to go back to the earlier feeding, but um since we're talking about weaning, how do you manage your weaning process? You said that they are not eating a lot of meal. How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 8:45

They still eat meal, and even when we got them outside, they were on ad lib. So when they were outside, we probably pushed the limits a wee bit. We've got a IBC, one of those big 1,000 litre tanks, um, put some teets around and put all our carbs in one mob. So normally you have to break them up to feed them with a trailer. We had 150. Normally you'd probably need three or four mobs. We thought, bugger it, we're gonna throw them all in one mob with one tank. In theory, it should work. And um they did, it worked reasonably well. And so, you know, there's some cleaning routines. We sort of cleaned all the equipment um every second or third day. But they did really well just with that one feeder.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

I guess by then they'd become accustomed to feeding when they wanted to rather than all feeding at once.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, exactly. So you'll find times of the day where they might um, you know, sort of get up in the morning and they'll wander over and have a suck, but they're not there for a long time. And we didn't find any real fighting. We watched the tank and there wasn't really any fighting or so. I think there was what, 12, 15 teats for 150 calves. So that worked reasonably well. So we're happy with that. And low cost. I mean, IBCs aren't that expensive in a couple of teats, so really cheap way of doing it. There are some challenges with that though. When you have a calf trailer, um, the calves know to follow the trailer. So when you're trying to move a mob through to a different paddock, uh there's a bit of a team effort to corral all the calves because they're not hungry at any stage and don't really know what to follow. So there is, I guess, a practical challenge in that element. But yeah, so coming back to the transition element, rumored development's always been, you know, a well-known element of calf rearing.

How the transition was managed

SPEAKER_02 10:12

And we didn't quite know how to tackle that within our lib system and saw it as a risk. So I chucked the question into Chat GPT and and tried to find out what knowledge was out there. And I think as Penny said, there's not a lot of New Zealand experience. And so I was I was picking on you know some international knowledge around what that looks like. And and so we landed with at about 65, 70 kilos. So after about five weeks, you want to start the transition. And that uh for us looked like taking the IBC out of the paddock and going back to feeding on a calf trailer. And we would feed just once a day, but as much as the calves could drink. So they might still be drinking seven litres perhaps in one go, but they only got that once a day to drink that much. And then I guess after about the second or third week, we started dropping that uh milk volume back. So we were starting to restrict their milk intake back to sort of five litres a day. So we got down to five litres a day per calf on average and maintained that through to weaning weight. We'd used our traditional winning weight, so it'll be interesting to test that in the future, but we still aimed for that sort of 85-90 kilo mark and then went like we normally would, sort of dropping the milk away over the space of sort of a week to 10 days and keeping that uh the meal feed up to them through that period. And they did look, they ate a lot of grass, surprisingly, actually, even on ad lib. And then the meal intake obviously rocketed up as we started to pull that feedback. And we'd had a, I guess, a backup measure that we felt that they needed to be eating about a kilo a day of meal on average before we wanted to pull the milk out. So the earlier calves, we probably transitioned a little bit late, and it they were about 120 kilos before they were eating a kilo of meal a day. So we can probably start them a little bit earlier. The later ones, I think our timing was pretty good. So that was, I guess, based on the the ChatGBT version of uh how to ad lib rare calves. Um it's great that Darren did coming out with some more guidance on that because as I say, it's the most critical period. Um ad lib feeding is actually really easy. Calves take to it well. That's the fantastic part. But yeah, I think if you if you don't get that transition right, and I call it transitioning because you're not weaning them as such, you're still feeding them milk. It's just the room and development that you're trying to accelerate at the end of calving.

Managing variation across the mob

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Now, with such a big mob of calves, there would have been perhaps more variance in the volume of milk each calf was getting or the amount of meal each calf was getting. How did you kind of manage that? And did you notice more calves perhaps not adjusting as well as you might when you have a closer handle on it?

SPEAKER_02 12:43

There's probably a couple of elements to that effect. So one was because we're feeding ad lib, so there was no competition between calves trying to fight on a calf milk trailer for milk. And so we found that our weight distribution was much more even. So you don't have the big calves sucking more of the milk, you know, maybe perhaps getting if you've average we were feeding an average of five litres per calf. So there'd be some calves that are probably gutsing six or seven litres, and some perhaps only getting two or three. And you see that in the uh the distribution of the weight over time. So we found that, yeah, that the spread of calf weight, we didn't have that tail end or as big a tail end as what we've traditionally seen. And saying that though, we did have probably two or three that decided to win themselves early. And I know that does happen under traditional milk systems, but they decided that perhaps Adela wasn't for them. Or it could have been a health issue that we didn't pick up. So there was probably three out of the 150 that are a definite tail end for us, and we probably need to watch those more closely. And perhaps coming back to that animal health question of when they're all lying down, are they happy? Are they lying down because they're happy? Are they lying down because they're sick? How do you monitor that animal health element of it? And so we found, you know, when you go to the paddock, you fill the container up, you don't see the rush of calves coming over, but you spend that time just wandering around, basically the whole mob, making sure they can get up. So it's getting them all up on their feet. Uh have they got a wet nose? Are they looking sickly? They will never look plump. You know, when you're feeding them on a calf milk trailer or on a feeder in a pen, they kind of go like a balloon and then start shivering. A shivery balloon, yeah. Yeah, the shivery full. Um, they will never do that under ad lib. So it's quite difficult to tell on any one day whether a calf has had enough to drink because they just never look plump like that. So yeah, I think getting them up, checking them that the you know the ears are up and that they sort of look healthy was our way of ensuring that we're having good health outcomes. But um all in all, we had far less uh health issues on ad lib than we've ever had before. So clearly the feeding is is improving their energy intake and ability to withstand weather and bugs and all that. So I think there's definitely some other advantages other than than sort of the ones that Penny highlighted around good calf health as well as the weight gain.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Now you talked about your concern about making sure you could transition them well. Did you have any other concerns? A common one for a lot of farmers is around nutritional scars. How did you manage the concerns that you did have?

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah, that was a bit of a try-it and hope scenario that we didn't end up with any scours. And this is my first experience with ad lib, so I'm not entirely sure how others have ended up with those scows environments, but it was something we were concerned about. So trying to mimic their natural environment as much as we could from day one. So these calves go into ad lib from day one, so even ad lib colostrum. I guess the idea was that you're not trying to restrict feed and then dump a whole lot of milk into their stomach, or you know, you can't come on and off it, that you've you've kind of got to stick with it the whole way through. Part of it could be that perhaps that you know, we use our colostrum milk for as long as it lasts, but we don't take milk out of the vat. We're onto powdered milk, so we transition into powdered milk after about three or four weeks. And I think uh like I don't know, but whether there's an element of because it's coming out of a bag and it's more sterile, that we don't have as many bugs in the milk potentially, and perhaps being a bit further south, we're in a colder climate rearing our calves, so perhaps we don't have the bug load. Yeah, that's all a bit of a guess at this stage. But no, we had actually less scowls, a lot less scowl on air-lib feeding than we did under the uh traditional system.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

That's promising. All right, so one season under your belt, and sounds like you're gonna stick

Does it stack up financially?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

with it. When you look at it in dollars and cents, how has it stacked up for you?

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah, that's an interesting question. It's probably the one you get asked the most. You think, oh, you're feeding all this milk? God, must be costing an arm and a leg, especially in a $10 payout. So we actually did the numbers because suddenly we're asking sort of similar questions and through all that's and we should do it ourselves just to understand how much we're spending. All I could do was really compare what we spent this year with what we did last year. We are rearing a few less calves. So last year we did 160, this year we did 150. Uh, but we actually used exactly the same amount of milk powder and pallets as what we did previous year. So what we've ended up with is taking that last three to four weeks worth of milk powder that we would have been feeding traditionally, front loaded that into the calves, and they've ended up weaning early. So from uh the calf rearing element of it and the feed side of things probably ended up about even. Um, some of those, as I said earlier, were fed probably a little bit longer than they needed to be. So potential milk but then further? Yeah, but then we were feeding less calves, so that I don't know, whether that evens itself out. The other farmers I've talked to are sort of saying an extra $25 a calf more or less in terms of feed. You do make savings on labour. So going back over the hours, and I even put a dollar figure on it, but we're spending considerably less time, particularly when they're outside for that sort of four weeks that they're outside before we start the transition. Yeah, with one mob and one IBC, um, you spend a lot less time running around with mobs and trying to get in and out of paddocks, and you just don't have that issue. They're not chasing you to the gate anymore. So, all in all, pretty good. There is some additional grazing costs, obviously. So going to grazing early, which we I mean, we do it internally, but there would be added cost on a weekly basis if you were going to grazing early. But yeah, the the weight gain, I guess I think we were 15% ahead of target at weaning, according to the minor records. And we've maintained that. So, yeah, 200 kilo calves that are 30 kilos, 30 kilos plus above target at the moment. So it'll be interesting to see whether that tapers off. Um, I'm just going to end up with really, really big heifers. I'm not sure. Um we will see. But uh in terms of being able to maintain that after that uh sort of transition weaning period, it's been pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Okay. Thank you.

What still matters: calf rearing fundamentals

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Cam, we've talked a lot about your feeding system, but there's obviously more to calf rearing than just feeding rates and frequency. What are some of the other essentials of your calf rearing system that you haven't mentioned yet?

SPEAKER_02 18:48

I guess probably landing back on some of those fundamentals that we've had for a long time, you know, trying to get calves out of the paddock into shelter and getting some gold colostrum down them as soon as possible. We do heat that. So we have noticed, particularly in our colder climate, that the more we can heat our milk, which is something you can't really do under an ad lib system, or difficult to do, does make a big difference on that animal weight gain. So for those first few days, we do try and heat the milk or at least not chill it to ensure that the calves aren't having to use their own energy to heat that milk as they do adjust it. Good calf bedding in clean areas, you still need good water supply, even though you know you're feeding them adulub milk, they will still drink water. Pallates, we have had straw or hay in the pens, although we're sort of reconsidering whether that's the right thing to do this coming season. So I'm experimental, so we like experimenting things.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Um so that's just based on some other knowledge that I've found. But um, those fundamentals are still really important. You know, we do a multi-mint injection as soon as the calves come in. That's really helped. So there's there's a couple of other things that I think, regardless of the way you feed them, that apply across all calf rearing systems.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Okay. Tell me about your staff, your calf rearing team.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

So we've just got the one. Just the one? Just the one on 150. We've always been that way, um, rightly and wrongly. So yeah, one of the uh neighbouring farmers, his partner comes in and does the calf rearing. We have a something a little bit different in that that once our calves go outside, we get them off farm pretty quickly. We've got a support block that we can graze them on and um and the labour shifts to that farm manager. So our our farm staff, other than picking the calves up in the morning and bringing them into the shed, really have very little to do with the calf rearing element, which makes things easier for them. They can focus on on the cows, which is great. Yeah, so in the in the shed, I mean, it's been, I think, such a a relief, you know, particularly that noise element coming in saying happy calves, no matter what the weather's doing, and then the uh I guess the reduction in in the workload. She's quite a small lady and trying to lug big buckets of milk around, you know, we've just got a calved trailer with a pump, we can just fill it up. There's a mark on the containers that we fill the milk up to on those containers, and it just helps us understand on a day-to-day basis, you know, we they should be drinking that more or less within a day, making sure they don't ever run out. But it just helps us understand what's their milk intake like over a period of time. And that was just part of the learning process. So I think that's an important part. Even on those IBCs, we had marks on there that you fill it up to here. This is where we'd sort of expect it to be the next day. If it's more or less than that, then that kind of gave us information as to how much they were drinking.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Okay. Penny,

Alternatives to ad-lib feeding

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Cam's gone ad lib, but that won't fit every farm. What are other feeding systems that still deliver the benefits that we've been talking about?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

So twice a day would be the most common feeding system. Automatic feeders are becoming a bit more common. And actually, interestingly, hearing Cam talk about how there's little competition with the the auto feeders. Some of the farmers have said they're smaller or like later born calves are feeding at like two in the morning. They've got that option, they can kind of get their take at odd hours of the day. So that sort of really speaks to that like no competition, really content calves. And so in the latest issue of Inside Dairy. We've got Cara, she's feeding twice a day for the first two weeks to get them off to that best start. She's got something called Wanda, where she keeps her gold colostrum warm so that she's really focused on her colossum and excellence. But then she shifts to that once a day, just to I guess make it manageable for herself. She's sole calf rara on the farm. And then we've also got another farmer, Emma, who's feeding ad lib with quite similar reasons to Cam around labour efficiency and growing them well. And then, yes, once a day is a good option to switch to a bit later on once your calves are kind of up and going. Again, reflecting what Cam's experience was with weaning and meal, calves can't absorb any nutrients from meal for the first three weeks. They'll nibble at it and it helps a little bit with rumen development. They need the volatile fatty acids in the meal. But they're getting no nutrition from it. Like there's nothing that they can put into growth. They're whole solely reliant on the milk. And so those first three weeks, yeah, if you can kind of front load it, like if you can't increase the amount of milk you can feed, can you at least sort of push it forward into that critical period?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Okay. And we've covered the benefits of higher milk feeding. What else can be done during the first two years of a heifer's life to support her growth and her future productivity?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Yeah, great question. And I guess just thinking about your costs for your calf rearing system, instead of just focusing on those first three months, actually, what's the cost over the first two years that she's going to hit the herd at that kind of 90% mature weight and really perform? In New Zealand, about 40% of our heifers actually drop out of the system from birth to their third calf. So you're losing your genetic gain. And, you know, it's not cheap to rear a heifer. So focusing on hitting those targets at puberty, mating, and pre-carving are really important. So condition score, but also actually what do they weigh? So yeah, weighing them, keeping an eye on that and keeping them on track. So get them started well as a calf and then yeah, keep that growth going. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

What are the common health challenges that farmers might have to manage through the first year, two years?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah. So in the calf shed scow is obviously the key issue. Whether it's rotavirus, crypto light, there's a lot of reasons. But the treatment's all very similar in terms of managing dehydration, providing electrolytes, and sort of trying to contain that spread and manage that disease load. There's a lot of pages in the new calf brewing resource around that. And obviously your veterinarians, your key go-to around calf health, considering things like rotavac for pregnant cows, those kind of options to help manage the scouring in the shed. And then once they're weaned, obviously you bring into play challenges like internal parasites. And in various parts of the country, facial eczema can be a challenge as well. Although that is sort of moving south, beef and lamb are doing some cool research on it at the moment, collecting sheep poo from like a hundred farms around the country. And yeah, it's further south than you might expect if you think I'm in Canterbury, there's no facial eczema spores here. Not accurate anymore with climate change. And that's probably maybe where some of the international literature that's showing these really strong links between how you rear them as a calf and how they're going to enter the herd needs a little bit more thought or testing in our pasture-based systems, because then they're out going through maybe feed checks or or health checks that these sort of indoor heifers wouldn't be facing. So yeah, that's kind of where I don't want to like take international literature and say it definitely works in a pasture-based system, because yeah, we're a bit unique compared to other bits of the world.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Cam, do you see facial eczema in your herd yet or not?

SPEAKER_02 25:40

To be honest, no. I understand that it is moving further south though, so something we're we're pretty vigilant on and we'll just keep an eye on. I'll wait and see.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Because you'll be used to it coming from the Waikato.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

I have had experience with it up there, so it's something that we I think we've been quite blessed that we don't have some of those um parasite issues and and spore issues down on the South Island, as Penny said, yet climate change is probably going to change that over time.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Right.

Why DairyNZ is focusing on this now

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Penny, why has DairyNZ increased its focus on calf rearing now?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

There's a couple of reasons sitting behind it. So the dairy cattle code of welfare is being reviewed or has been underreviewed for quite a while now. But when that was consulted on publicly four years ago, one of the proposed minimum standards was around calf feeding. And what was suggested as the new minimum standard was feeding twice a day for three weeks at 20% body weight. We pushed back on that. We didn't think that was minimum. But I think we'd expect some change when the code comes out around feeding twice a day for at least the first maybe two to three weeks.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

I might be um jumping ahead. But where do ideas like that proposal in the code come from?

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I guess that probably does reflect that shift in science. So feeding once a day from births, not that close to what they would do naturally. There is evidence they're experiencing hunger. So there's feeding volume and feeding frequency. To get the volume into them, you need to feed them more frequently because there's sort of a cap on what they can drink once a day. So feeding once a day from birth when they're not getting any nutrients from any other source, it's not sort of great for their behaviour in terms of how much they would like to suck, and they're hungry as well. You're not kind of meeting their nutritional needs either. So there is evidence around feeding more frequently, at least in those first couple of weeks, where it's quite crucial. So there's that regulatory push, but also just looking at the switch in evidence. Dairy and Z never really pulled it together. Like we've got a couple of web pages on it, but we haven't traditionally done a lot in the car fairing space. Dairy Women's Network, one of our key partners, they've been active in the space, they've been doing workshops, but there was no kind of, I guess, single source of truth across the industry when we sort of at the start of the project looked at what the gaps were, what farmers' needs were. And we did a lot of user interviews. There is information about car fearing available, but it's often attached to a commercial product. And farmers told us they maybe discounted that advice or weren't sure if it was completely accurate because it was attached to selling a product, which is why we've made a DairyNZ car furing manual, which is it is quite a teeth technical dive. Like I don't think it's bedside reading. Um, but you can kind of, if you just want to know more about colostrum, you can kind of deep dive into that. And so yeah, it's it's quite dense, but it's all sort of the independent research base as opposed to maybe being associated with a product. Some of our um international customers are quite interested in how we're rearing our calves as well. So Nestle, with their focus on emissions, are looking at where some of the efficiencies are in our young stock rearing as well. So obviously, you can grow them faster and they stay in the herd and you've got better longevity. There's an emissions impact of doing that. Well, they have been investing in calf research with various milk processes. So I think Sinlei Fonterra and Open Country have all been delving into this space, but kind of separately. And so DairyNZ is that kind of independent sector organization, we can bring that together into one place. So that was one of the other reasons we've kind of looked into this space.

Tools, guides and upcoming events

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Okay. You mentioned the new calf rearing guide and that it's quite a hefty technical document. What else does DariNZ have coming for farmers who might not want to read that one?

SPEAKER_01 29:22

So, based on what farmers told us, there's an ad lib feeding guide coming. Um, we're not pushing ad lib, we're not saying this is a system, but like Cam said, he had to chat GPT because there wasn't something available. So my colleague Kat spent quite a bit of time talking to farmers, getting those kind of practical insights on ad lib feeding. That's not necessarily in the literature, and pulled that into a guide trying to mythbust some of those things around the weaning and transition piece as well. We've got a shed poster for signs of a healthy calf, so something for maybe newer staff who aren't familiar with calf rearing, how to use a bricks refractometer. So, yeah, the technical manual kind of sets the base, but then we've got more easy-to-use tools designed for newer staff or people looking at a system change. So we've tried to be really responsive to what farmers want and where there's kind of gaps in the market.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Okay, and I believe there's some calf rearing events underway.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yep. So there's the calf expo delivered by Dairy Women's Network, which we'll be part of. So there's four of them around the country in June and July. And then DairyNZ are also doing some on-farm events, which are more looking at the system level changes. So Dairy Women's Network does an amazing job with the fundamentals, how to set that up. These are more, I guess, on-farm. How would you actually put that into practice? So just did the first one in Northland last week, and there's more rolling out across the country. There's some standalone ones, there's some like tagged into a wider discussion group. So again, trying to be responsive to the farmers in the regions. Some area managers have told me, oh, I don't think a standalone event's going to be right for this area, but definitely it would fit into a discussion group. So cool, that's what's going to get to people. That's how we want to kind of be presenting the information.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Okay, so how can farmers find out about the Dairy Women's Network events and the Dairy and Z opportunities?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

So Dairy Women's Network, head to their website. There's the four expos in Waikato, Taranaki, Southland, and Canterbury, which I think are kind of mid-June, early July. And then ours will be on our DairyNZ events page as well as they kind of roll through, obviously kind of starting in Northland and heading down to Southland following, you know, the dry-off and calving period.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Thank you. Cam, before we wrap up, I want to come back to you. You've obviously made a big change moving to ad lib calf feeding. What other changes are on your horizon?

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah, well, there's probably a couple of things, and Penny just highlighted one before around the animal welfare code. So that's obviously as a director, we've been quite intimately involved with, and it's great that the ad lib system that we've implemented really deals with some of those key controversies there, perhaps around frequency of feeding. It's much more natural system, which is great. But I guess in terms of our system, we are looking at a dairy beef as well in the future. And that was one of the reasons we did look at this. How do we, given our shed system, carfering system was built for only for our replacements in terms of infrastructure? Are there ways that we could expand that capability without building a lot of new infrastructure to enable us to rear more calves? And so we thought, well, we'll run our we do a few Sherolets at the moment and Sherroe crosses. And um traditionally, I think anyone that's been in the dairy beef game has found that dairy beef animals struggle to compete with those out of the beef sector, mostly because of their growth rate. You know, they just don't quite get to the same size as fast. And so the the beef market perhaps doesn't value them as highly. And so we're thought, right, well, let's let's chuck 20 of our Sherroys through the system. And and man, they just trumped the heifers. Um did even better. Like they stacked some weight on. We did wean them earlier, we probably could have carried them on, but they weaned it about week eight or nine. They were phenomenally fast. Obviously, bred to put that weight on. So I think for those that are looking at getting into you know dairy beef opportunities and want that weight gained to be able to get an animal, you know, weaned into market quickly and compete with some of those beef animals, I would seriously recommend looking at an ad lib system to get that. And I guess, you know, all in all, we've spent a lot of money on developing the genetics for both these animals, right? For our for our heifers and for our dairy beef opportunities. And and perhaps thinking back to that Pokawa research, that while that was around trying to get an animal to weaning as cheaply as possible, are we undercutting the genetics that were bred into these animals by kneecapping the the growth process so early on in their lives? So yeah, it's been interesting just you know going to the other end of the spectrum, how much can you get them to grow? And it is actually quite phenomenal. You you really can see it. It's an easy system to try. You can try a pen, you don't have to do the whole lot. It's cheap to try for a pen. So, you know, for those that are can to give a go, even just for your dairy beef, chuck a drum in there and just you can see the difference between your own calves that are on once a day and those that are on Adlib.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

I imagine that weaning them early also created some capacity within your system for more calves.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Yes, so they've they're in and out of the shed pretty quickly. They were in and out in about 10 days. And we found that because of the weight gain and I guess the resilience that they were getting out of not necessarily needing to be in shelter because the feeding system was so good, we weren't finding the same health issues. We were able to have bigger pens. You could run, you don't need to have 20 per pen, you could have 40 per pen that they could probably run outside a little bit earlier because they just look and behave, I guess, more robustly earlier. And so that's given us, you know, the confidence to put them outside and and to free up some space earlier.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Brilliant. Any thoughts to add, Penny?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah, I guess real rough numbers. A 40 kilo calf fed four litres is putting roughly two-thirds of that into maintenance, which doesn't leave a lot of energy left to be directed into growth. Or I guess, you know, if it's cold weather, they'll put it into keeping warm. And if there's a disease challenge, they'll put it into that immune response. So very quickly, they're maybe only just sitting on maintenance because they're putting their energy into these other uses. So feeding that kind of ad lib system kind of unlocks that, yeah, maybe they've, you know, it's a little bit cooler, but they can just keep growing because they can just top themselves up more.

Episode summary

SPEAKER_00 35:15

All right, so there you have it a real farm, Cam, that's tried something different and Penny with the science behind why it works. Key things that came out for me are the concern about nutritional scales doesn't seem well, it wasn't a problem for Cam. Um, and that concern about rumen development is manageable if you're getting the basics right. And the benefits are real. So heifers hitting targets earlier and potentially producing more milk in their first lactation. And as Penny said, there's different ways to do this. Adlib worked for Cam, but that's not the only option. And the key is understanding the principles and choosing what fits your farm. DairyNZ's updated covering resources will be available this winter with the latest research and practical guidance, and you'll find them at dairynz.co.nz. Thank you so much, Penny and Cam, for joining us. And thank you for listening, and we'll catch you next time. Matiwa. If you'd like to get connected with DariNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get-connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes. As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdairy at dairynz.co.nz. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.