The autumn-calving season is underway on dairy farms, with feeding calves high-quality colostrum being one of the most important jobs at this time of year.
When feeding calves this autumn you should follow the 1,2,3 rule to ensure they receive the best start to life.
Using the 1,2,3 rule:
- Use the first milk (colostrum) from the cow;
- Feed the calf colostrum within the first two hours of birth;
- Calves must be offered at least 3L of good-quality colostrum.
Colostrum
Feeding calves 3L of colostrum is fine, but you should ensure that the colostrum is of high quality.
To ensure that calves are receiving adequate amounts of high quality colostrum, you should test the colostrum’s quality.
A Brix refractometer can be used to determine colostrum quality. High-quality colostrum has a reading of 22% or above.
Where colostrum quality is an issue, colostrum determined to be 22% or more on the refractometer can be used or stored.
Autumn-calving
If you have your close-to-calving cows housed and on silage, to help them produce high quality colostrum, they should be fed high-quality silage with at least 12% protein.
Feeding poorer quality will cause poorer quality colostrum to be produced by the cows.
If feed quality is an issue you can feed cows some soya two weeks prior to calving, to boost colostrum quality.
Many farmers will be hesitant to feed soya to cows heavily in-calf, as they would be afraid of big calves.
But, feeding soya to cows that late in pregnancy will not impact the size of the calf – once it is not overfed.
Between 200-300g/head is adequate to improve colostrum quality being produced by the cows.
If you have already started calving, it is not too late to offer some cows soya. Separate the cows that are still at least two weeks away from calving and offer these cows soya.