A two-pronged approach to reducing the workload associated with feeding heifer calves at a Co. Tipperary farm has not only provided flexibility but replacements are hitting target weights of 300-340kg at under a year old.
Brian D’Arcy and his family run a herd of 120 Holstein Friesians in Ballina, where they retain calves as dairy replacements or sell at 12-18 months old.
Seeing the effects of Shine Once-a-Day
As Brian milks every day except Saturdays he wanted to ease his workload in other areas of the business and was introduced to Shine Once-a-Day by Paul Conroy of Conroy Agri Supplies and Joe Murphy of Bonanza Calf Nutrition (manufacturer).
The results were so good in the first year that Brian used the product the following year.
To ease his workload further in the third year, he purchased an automatic feeder. Believing he could not feed Shine Once-a-Day through this, he fed a 23% whey-based milk replacer.
That year he experienced problems with the calf rearing. “The calves weren’t thriving; they were loose, queuing for hours in the mornings and they weren’t thriving,’’ Brian admitted.
“My brother was feeding Shine Once-a-Day for the third consecutive year and his calves were thriving,’’ he continued.
On-farm support
At this point Dr. Christine Cummins of Bonanza Calf Nutrition stepped in to help.
The priority was to get calf health back on track as they were loose, lethargic and stressed.
“All calves are fed 7-8L of transition milk for the first few days, which created two problems when they went on the feeder,’’ Christine said.
“Calves were going onto the feeder after 3-4 days, so they were only getting 2-3 days of transition milk.
“This milk was from cows vaccinated for rotavirus so the plan changed to manually feeding calves transition milk for the first 10 days to build up antibodies against rotavirus.’’
The second challenge was that the automatic feeder’s feeding plan started by allocating each calf 4L – approximately half the feed they were given in their first days of life.
“We tweaked the feed plan to match the farm system,’’ Christine explained.
Time was spent considering all the factors that may be contributing to the challenges to calf health and it was noted that the calves needed a lot of attention during the training period, particularly when there were many animals using the feeder.
I noticed calves weren’t persistent in waiting for the bowl to mix a new lot of powder so they were going away from the station without a feed.
Other factors including checking the feed concentration and observing housing were also considered.
To recover calf condition, they were fed Transformula, a transition milk replacer, through the machine for a week. This provided calves with extra nutrition and added benefits.
After that week, Since Once-a-Day was introduced.
“This is the powder Brian was happy with and once he was assured it would feed successfully through the machine, he was happy to go back to it,’’ Christine said.
“Apart from a minor wobble after snow got into the calf housing, things went very smoothly in year two on the feeder.’’
Ringing Christine at the first sign of trouble meant Brian got ahead of any problems. “It is worth a lot to have someone to call, even if it is just a chat on the phone to discuss something. I didn’t have that before,’’ he said.
Positive results
He is very happy with his system. “To get the calves right, there is a lot of work to the automatic machine system, but it does give me more flexibility.’’
“These animals got no meal from July to November at which time they were fed 2kg/head/day and went back to no meal from January onward,’’ Brian said.
To find your local stockist simply click here
