Articles in the Plan365 section allow Farmlands suppliers to share best practice and the latest advances in rural technology, to help shareholders with their farming needs all year round.
Calf roadshow puts rearers in front A month of meeting shareholders and calf rearers face to face while travelling the country with the Calf Experts Roadshow has been a real joy, with keen rearers travelling up to 2 hours in some instances to attend.
Broken or worn teats can affect your
The roadshow covered everything from calf set-up, hygiene, colostrum, rumen development, being proactive, weighing and weaning.
using calf milk replacement from an
There were some great discussions around stopping a calf from crosssucking, how long should calf teats last and how many sucks should you get from a teat.
calf’s performance. Teats need to be cleaned and checked daily for wear. Worn teats leaking or flowing fast can interfere with the curding process of whole milk and casein. One issue with open trough is a larger volume of milk being delivered too fast and overflowing to the rumen, where fermentation causes harmful bloat. Best practice and animal performance dictates that you keep teat quality paramount. In the case of two farms with
If animals display abnormal behaviours, it is important to make changes to the environment or their management to reduce these. In calves, the most common abnormal behaviours involve repetitive sucking on or licking other calves or pen fixtures. Cross-sucking usually occurs on the mouth, ears, navel, tail and scrotal (bulls) or udder (heifers) areas of other calves. The lactose in whole milk or milk replacers triggers the suck reflex in a calf. If the milk feed is delivered too quickly then the young calf starts to show signs of frustration and will seek objects to suck.
the same batch of teats and with calves
The suck reflex can last for up to 15 minutes after the milk feed. A handful of a premium well-balanced calf feed alongside some easily digestible fibre like barley straw straight after the milk feed, along with fresh clean accessible water, sets up a good habit.
adjustment in management practices
Teat wear can also influence crosssucking. There are so many teat options and each manufacturer has its unique formulation, which affects teat wear.
or the friendly team at your local
WWW.FARMLANDS.CO.NZ
reared under the same process, one farm averaged 400 uses and the other 600 uses before degrading. Calf teats wear due to the chemicals used for cleaning and sanitising and
| Worn teats leaking or flowing fast can interfere with the curding process of whole milk and casein.
physical or mechanical wear from calves sucking and chewing on the teats. Consider a farm that allows calves to routinely suck and chew on teats for 2 minutes after draining their feed. If the farm averages 450 uses per teat, these 2 minutes translate into 15 hours of idle sucking on each teat. A slight could go a long way towards improving your teat life as well making for a more satisfied, happy calf. For further information, contact your Farmlands Technical Field Officer Farmlands store. Article supplied by Farmlands Technical Specialist Karen Fraser
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