Despite low milk prices and the temptation to cut costs, dairy farmers are being urged to maintain best practise calf rearing to ensure that the internationally accepted higher lifetime milk production, linked to rapid growth in the first few months of life, is achieved.

Dr Michael Marsden, head of technical at Trident Feeds explains that during the early stages of a calf’s life, it’s able to convert feed into a live weight gain of 3:1.

“This is easily the most efficient time in their lives and producers should therefore be fully utilising the potential of early growth and the long term production benefits, which includes encouraging the rumen to develop correctly so feeds are fermented and nutrients absorbed efficiently.

“For this reason, it’s extremely important that they receive adequate measures of quality assessed colostrum within the first few hours of life. Ideally the calf will consume 4 to 6 litres in the 24 hours, either naturally or bottled,” he says.

“Producers then have to make the decision as to whether they continue to feed the calf on cow’s milk, or preferably when rearing dairy heifers, on dedicated replacement milk powder, up until weaning.”

No matter what milk system the unit chooses, young calves should have access to fresh creep feed and clean water to encourage rumen development.

"The available creep feed should be very palatable to encourage intake, rich in highly digestible fibre sources such as sugar beet feed, coupled with clean dust free chopped straw to facilitate rumen development, and high in quality protein with crude protein content of at least 18 PER CENT,” says Dr Marsden

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“With energy values of 12.5 ME/kg DM from mostly slow but, highly digestible fibre, sugar beet feed is the perfect accompaniment to starchy cereals,” he adds.

Dr Marsden concludes by saying that while there’s no single system when it comes to calf rearing, the principles of consistency, cleanliness and observation should be followed as tightly as possible, in order to operate efficiently.