Farm boosts calf growth rates and cuts disease with practical tips

When her farm began struggling with scour outbreaks, dairy farmer and vet tech Abbie Hewitt (pictured below) sought help from her vet and further investigation turned up a few surprises. Livestock editor Sarah Kidby attended a Women in Dairy workshop to nd out more.

While Abbie’s farm had not previously had any obvious calf health problems, she joined the Calf Club at Oakhill Farm Vets when she began to see scour outbreaks. Vet Suzie Bailey (pictured top right) carried out a calf health visit looking at the calving pen up until weaning, assessing a range of factors from hygiene, calf nutrition and environmental features, to data such as age at rst calving, mortality rates and length of the dry period.

Recommendations and outcomes

Suzie made a number of recommendations, resulting in better colostrum and improved growth rates, as well as tackling problems with scour and pneumonia. The age at rst calving has also steadily decreased over a 12-month average from 28 months in October 2019 to 26 months in October 2021. Kath Aplin (left), vet adviser with Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, noted that each day over 24 months costs £2.87 per day. With a 60-day reduction so far, this equates to £172 saving per heifer reared – if rearing 100 heifers per year this is a saving of over £1,700 for the farm. Calving at

26 months versus 28 months also means that when heifers do go into the herd it is likely there will be a 1,000—2,000-litre increase in lifetime yield, she added. Environmental: Suzie recommended keeping pens well bedded up and carrying out nest scoring, ensuring that bedding covers the lower parts of the leg when lying down. Draughts were also identi ed in the calf pen, so a straw bale was put in place. The farm has now moved to keeping calves in hutches all year round, including through summer, to address problems with pneumonia. While this has made feeding and mucking out more challenging, Abbie said the results have been good.

Nutrition: The assessment agged up inconsistencies between sta for weighing out milk powder. As well as scour problems, growth rates were also found to be a little below target, so the milk powder was changed to a higher quality product in March 2021. Although much dearer than their previous milk powder, Abbie said the di erence is signi cant and there has been no scour in the calves that were put on the new brand.

They also feed a lot more now – previously a few litres each side of the day, now they start at 3 litres and at 3–4 weeks put it up to four. While many say this can cause scouring, that has not been the case for Abbie’s farm. Suzie puts this down to the fact that the milk powder is very high quality; more or less all protein is coming from milk protein, whereas lower quality milk powders may get protein from other sources that are not as easily digestible. Also, the milk powder has a similar osmolality to normal milk.

Ideally, calves should be on 3 litres twice a day almost straight away, feeding as close as possible to whole milk, Suzie advised.

Colostrum management: Feedback and testing revealed colostrum transfer was suboptimal. In response, the farm created a new dry cow shed with proper mattresses and higher quality feed, and now always measures colostrum quality before giving it to calves. Colostrum quality “has de nitely improved” and the cows are much happier, Abbie said.

Medicine recording: Suzie suggested a whiteboard to record treatments which worked initially, but now hutches are used, the farm has opted for a group on Facebook for calf rearers to view and record any calf medicines that have been administered and when.

The Calf Club

Oakhill Farm Vets has been running the Calf Club for the past few years, after it was set up for clients who wanted to improve calf health and make sure they were rearing the best quality heifers. It now has around 25 dairy farms on board.

Under the scheme, a vet tech visits the farm weekly and provides provides blood results within 24 hours. All calves are weighed, then reweighed at six weeks to record growth rates – generally, farms should aim for 0.8kg/day daily liveweight gain. Blood sampling is carried out at under seven days to determine whether calves are getting enough quality colostrum and a tra c light system evaluates colostrum transfer – green for calves with a total protein score of 55g/litre and over; orange for 52–54g/litre and red for below 52g/litre, indicating poor colostrum transfer. Farms should be aiming for over 75% of calves in the green, according to Suzie.

As well as monitoring colostrum and growth rates, vet techs also visit the farm to administer vaccinations and carry out disbudding, which means less jobs for the farmer – something that is particularly welcome due to current recruitment issues, Suzie noted. Constant feedback is given on performance and colostrum management, which has resulted in less disease, mortality and deaths, as well as better utilisation of vaccines on members’ farms.

Each month, participating farms get a benchmarking report to compare their performance to others and farmer meetings o er practical advice on how to improve, Suzie explained. “Everybody probably knows the gold standard way of, say, rearing a calf but it’s putting it into practice on farm and doing it in a way that is e cient and practical. It’s great getting farmers together to chat about that, share ideas and see what’s worked for them.” FG