After what has hopefully been a successful period of getting calves onto the farm and being fed milk/milk replacer, the next stage is planning to wean the calves and get them ready to turn out later this spring.
As part of the final episode of ‘The Calf Show’ series, Pat Collins – a Teagasc Green Acres Calf to Beef programme participant – spoke about the procedure when it comes to weaning calves on his farm.
Pat explained:
“Once we get the calves to about six-weeks-of-age, we put them onto once-a-day feeding and then, from about eight weeks on, we start gradually reducing the milk.
Once the calves are starting to eat 1kg of ration, we start to reduce the milk and then hope to move them up to about 2kg/day of ration before we wean them fully.
“When they are weaned off the milk, we feed them on a ration that includes chopped straw, at about 12%. The calves will get that ad-lib until they are eating about 3kg of the ration at grass.”
Why include the chopped straw into the diet?
With the inclusion of chopped straw into the ration being fed to calves, Pat went through what the reasoning is behind feeding this to his calves. He continued:
“It will add a bit of fibre into the calves’ diet and still feeding them that ration when they are on milk.
Then, when the calves are going out to grass, the ration will fill them up – they won’t go out and gorge on a load of grass when they are let out first.
“It allows their rumen to develop before they go onto a more grass-based diet.
“When we let them out to grass we let them out to stronger and stemy covers, just to have an extra bit of fibre and that the grass isn’t too lush for them.
“Once the 3kg/day intake of ration is hit, we start to wean them off it and improve the quality of grass that they are grazing.”
Developing the rumen
Dermot Meehan from Drummonds also spoke about some of the best ways to enhance rumen development prior to weaning. He explained:
“In the first few weeks, you need to kick-start the rumen and this will encourage the calves and the amount of concentrates that they are eating.
Giving calves the availability of long forage will help this rumen development – along with access to clean water at all times.
“They should be eating at least 1-1.5kg/day of meal over a period of four or five days before weaning,” he concluded.
You can watch the full discussion by clicking on the link below.