An open day on a dairy farm at Leongatha North saw attendees discuss raising calves and milk volumes.
The event was held at the farm of Rob and Heather Calder, Wandilla Holsteins, and was co-hosted by Rob with Lely Center Gippsland.
In 2023, Rob and Heather commissioned the building of a new shed for raising their calves – 400 each year.
The shed was designed with several pens, a five-station Lely Calm calf feeder with hygiene boxes for automated cleaning, five automated grain feeders, rapid drinking troughs and automatic brushes for calves to enjoy grooming themselves.
Rob said he or a worker only spend about 20 minutes per day in the shed, thanks to automation.
Glen Monson, from Lely Center Gippsland, who helped set up the feeding system, explained the Calder’s feeding program and other available options.
“We find there are two main benefits with the Calm machine,” Glen said.
“The system is flexible for the operator, whether that’s the farmer or the labour unit, who can set it up for the calves then go home to have breakfast with their family.
“Then they can return to the calf shed later in the morning and check the calves. That’s the biggest thing.
“Then there’s the consistency of the milk for the calves – whether that’s powdered milk or from the vat, the calves are getting the same consistency of powder and water ratio or milk volumes that the calf is allowed to get.”
The Calder’s calves are on a feeding plan of seven days on three litres of milk, then another two weeks where they ramp up from three to five litres, then five litres for 40 days.
“Then over 10 days they’re weaned from five litres to one-and-a-half litres of milk,” Rob Calder said.
“The grain plan is 10 days of 200 grams, then it’s ramped up over a couple of weeks from 200 grams to two kilograms.
“Then for the next 100 days, even after weaning, they can access two kilograms of grain a day, until they’re taken out of the shed.”
A key point of discussion was comparing feeding regimes against liveweight gain.
Of course, feeding good quality colostrum to the calf as soon as possible after birth was essentially to ensure its gut cells worked well. A refractometer was useful to measure the health of the colostrum.
Andrea Meerwath of Lely Center Gippsland said it was to the dairy farmers advantage to store good quality colostrum in the freezer for those times when it is needed.
“It’s important to give them as much colostrum as possible in the first few hours,” she said.
“If I bring the calf in and go and get a cup of tea for myself, then come back to feed colostrum to the calf – the calf has missed out on its best start in life.
“Your colostrum should be between 39 and 40 degrees, and it should be fed at least three times to the calf.
“And they should be fed at least two litres at a time in those first feeds, to encourage the sucking reflex.”
Andrea said it was important to balance energy and protein, to guarantee liveweight gain to grow a heifer for joining in an optimal time frame.
In one example discussed by the group, an additional 0.2kg of daily liveweight gain in the first eight weeks as a calf could correlate to weaning earlier, joining earlier and up to an extra 800kg produced in the first lactation.
Andrea recommended adlib feeding of milk and grain. Using a milk powder with added protein aided digestibility and growth, particularly in young calves.
“You cannot feed a calf too much,” she said.
“You can use the Lely Calm system to train the calf that it can drink as much as it wants to. Keep that in mind if you want to give it a try.”
One example was giving a calf an allocation of 10 litres of milk a day, then gradually weaning that down, over several weeks, to four to five litres a day.
“Calves then look for grain and hay,” Andrea said.
“You feed it to them from the first few days, so that they smell it, they nibble a little bit on it, so they know it when they are looking for more food.
“You can’t feed a calf too much when you get it all back in their first lactation.”
She said that in a bucket feeding system, an adlib system worked best when calves were housed separately from each other.