The autumn-calving period is underway and ensuring that calves get off to the best start in life is vital to ensure continued growth performance is achieved.
During the first few weeks of life calves are the most efficient at putting on weight and therefore proper management is very important at this time.
This period can have a major impact on calf performance and whether or not targets are met.
Ensuring that calves get adequate levels of high-quality colostrum is going to be a key part of ensuring that calves develop and meet growth targets.
Autumn calving
Feed efficiency is very high in the young calf (100g of feed will give 50-60g of growth), but these growth rates drop off dramatically during the first year of life – when 100g of feed will only give 9g of growth.
At weanling stage the feed efficiency drops to 36% and when you breed the heifer, the feed efficiency has dropped to less then 10%.
This means that it is vital to achieve good performance in young calves to ensure that targets are met.
It is important to ensure that calves are getting a high-quality milk replacer or whole milk. If whole milk is being fed it is important to screen the herd for Johne’s disease.
For calves being fed on milk replacer it is important to be consistent in feeding. Farmers should use the same milk replacer throughout the rearing period to avoid upsetting calves.
Rumen
When calves are born they are more similar to pigs than older cattle, as they are monogastric – meaning they have a single-compartment stomach.
Because of this, developing their rumen is vital during the rearing period. From one week, calves should be offered concentrates and fibre – which can be in the form of hay or straw.
Ensuring that calves have access to ad-lib water is also vital.
Generally, calves can be weaned once they are eating at least 1kg of concentrates/day.
After they have been weaned, calves should be offered up to 2kg of concentrates along with forage.