Higher growth rates from fortified milk

The nutrition we get from the food we eat becomes the building blocks of our body and supports us to get through our busy days, repair our muscles and keep our immune system functioning. If we don’t eat well, we become compromised and that’s when we become susceptible to any illnesses doing the rounds. This is probably even more relevant over calving, with long workdays and no time for preparing balanced meals.

It’s the same for calves. If we don’t give them the right energy, protein and micronutrients they too become compromised, which makes rearing them that much harder and will affect their performance. If we fully cover their needs and feed to a high plane of nutrition, we will have healthier calves that will perform better. So how can we support our calves nutritionally to set our system up for success? It’s important to get the basics right. That means choosing quality nutrition products but also using them in the correct way. Even if you are using a good quality milk replacer, if you mix it up at the incorrect rate, have worn teats on your feeders or inconsistent mob sizes once you are using open troughs, you will not get the best out of the product. Similarly with hard feed – if you don’t have adequate trough space or good hygiene practices, you’re not doing enough to encourage intake in your calves. Make sure you put out fresh hard feed each day, clear away old, slobbered on feed and don’t smother the hard feed with other things. If you do want to use the likes of sodium bentonite or zeolite, keep it in a separate container to the hard feed so that it doesn’t limit feed intake. Meeting our calves’ energy and protein requirements is critical. If we don’t do this, we see our calves in maintenance mode when they should be growing. As calves increase in size, their energy and protein requirements increase too. So make sure you are ramping up the energy and protein delivered in their milk feed as they get older. One way to do this is to fortify whole milk with milk powder. Fortification is the addition of calf milk replacer to whole milk to increase the energy and protein concentration so that higher growth rates can be supported without increasing the volume fed. Fortifying milk with calf milk replacer means that calves are not having to consume large volumes of liquid but still get covered for their energy and protein requirements – sort of like drinking a thickshake. If you are thinking about this as an option, talk to your Farmlands TFO, who can help you get a programme in place that will work for your system. If you have any questions or concerns, reach out early rather than soldier on alone. Sometimes a clever system change can make a big difference to performance and workload.

For further information, contact your Farmlands Technical Field Officer or the friendly team at your local Farmlands store.

Article supplied by Stacey Cosnett, Farmlands Nutritionist

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