Milk replacer is a crucial part of the rearing of your calves, and it is important that you chose one that will be beneficial this calving season.
Pat Farrelly farms on two milking platforms outside Carnaross in Co. Meath. The cows are split into autumn and spring calving herds. The calves are reared on Auctus Opti-Skim Calf Milk Replacer.
“Since using Opti-Skim, there is a significant improvement in calf health,” said Pat.
The Opti-Skim is a 60% skim product, with 24% Protein and 19% oil and fat contents.
Pat said “since changing to Opti-Skim last year, calves have been significantly healthier. It’s like the calves have been on wholemilk”.
Pat is calving 270 cows in the spring herd and 180 cows in the autumn herd on separate farms. All of the cows are milked through Lely robots.
Once calves are born, they are given 3L of colostrum from the dam and put into pens of six for a period of seven days.
All calves are fed transition milk for these seven days. The cows are vaccinated for rotavirus between one-month-to-six-weeks before calving.
After seven-days-of-age, the calves are brought into bigger pens, where they are fed on Opti-Skim from Auctus.
The calves are separated into heifers and bulls. They are fed through a JFC computerised feeder with two stations in the training shed pictured below.
The JFC feeder is set at 125g/L or 12.5% solids. The feed curve is set with a two day training period at 4L fed/calf/day split into three feeds.
The calves are then ramped up to 6.5L/day over the next nine days. The calves are fed Opti-Skim at 6.5L/day until they are 49-days-of-age.
They are weaned off gradually over the next seventeen days.
The calves are weaned completely off milk at 66-days-of age. The group pens are filled up to a maximum of 30 calves, where they are kept on this training feeder between one-and-two weeks, depending on the speed of calving.
Milk replacer
Once the pen is full and calves are fully trained onto the feeder, then the complete pen is moved to the second farm – where there is a second JFC computerised feeder with four feed stations, where calves remain until weaning.
Pat weans calves on weight between 90-95kg. Calves are weighed using a belly band.
All of the heifers calving down are synchronized, so that first calvers will be calving between January 1 to January 20, where extra care and attention can be prioritized to these before the main herd of cows start calving from January 20 onwards.
All cows and heifers are artificially inseminated (AI), and all of Pat’s cows are British Friesian.
On the beef side, after a certain date of British Friesian ai, Pat switches to beef straws.
A deal has been agreed with a purchaser, where the beef buyer will select the cows they want to receive AI, supplies the straws they want at their cost and have agreed a price for the calves, both bulls and heifers.
The calves are collected from the farm at two-weeks-of-age. The purchaser has selected all Aberdeen Angus straws for this year’s spring calving herd.
Pat commented that the introduction of Opti-Skim has meant that weight targets are met at weaning, and this has carried through so far to ensure bulling weights are also on target.
Cian Shryane, calf manager for both farms, indicated that the calves’ coats look very healthy.
To find out more about Autcus, please contact:
Brian Geraghty (Counties Donegal, Monaghan and the west of Ireland) 087-1175971 [email protected]
Daragh O’Rourke (Co. Cavan and south-east of Ireland) 087-1170803 [email protected]
John Linnane (Midlands and south-west of Ireland) 087-7996247 [email protected]
Lorraine Killen (Northern Ireland) 0044-7342 259225 [email protected]
