For a spring-calving herd the busiest time of the year is the calving season, so getting ahead of yourself and preparing for spring now, is no harm.
Although the spring seems a long way off currently, it will not be that long coming.
Spring-calving
If you have not already done so you should begin power washing and disinfecting the calf pens and calf sheds on your farm.
A wide range of pathogens can remain alive in the environment for several months, i.e. Cryptosporodium parvum, which can remain in the environment for up to six months.
Last spring saw several delays to exporting calves due to bad weather conditions. This meant many farms had extra calves for a longer period of time.
This put pressure on many current calf buildings and asks the question on many farms: Is extra calf accommodation needed?
Building a new calf shed this late in the year is not realistic, but calf hutchs could offer an effective solution for many farms.
Disease
Dealing with sick calves is part of the calf rearing process, but if last year sickness was more wide spread than usual, something may need to be changed.
If scour was an issue last year, ideally you should have taken samples and sent them a lab for analysis to determine the bacteria causing the issue.
A disinfectant that is known to kill this bacteria should then be used before calves start to arrive, and again when the shed is finished with for the year.
If pneumonia was an issue last year, you need to make changes to the shed to try and prevent it from being an issue this year.
Pneumonia can be caused by several factors, including the presence of bacteria and viruses, the environment and the immune-status of the animal.
Environmental factors that can cause pneumonia include low environmental temperatures, high humidity, poor ventilation and direct draughts.
Equipment
Calf rearing can be a time-consuming process, but there is a wide range of calf rearing equipment that can reduce this time, i.e. an automatic calf feeder, which will not only reduce the amount of time feeding calves but will also monitor intakes of each calf.
An automatic feeder will not suit every farm, a milk trolley may be more suitable to some farms, particularly on farms where calves might be housed in a number of sheds.
Milk trolleys reduce the amount of buckets that need to be carried around, while also mixing the milk replacer for you.
Although they will not completely reduce the time needed to rear calves, they can create more time during the busy spring-calving season to get other jobs done.