What’s one of the best ways to get a highly productive dairy cow? Make sure it has high-quality nutrition as a calf.
“Feeding calves better makes better milk cows,” says Jim Drackley, PhD and professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
That sounds like a simple enough undertaking, but that’s not been the case historically. Early calf nutrition – at the milk phase stage, in particular – is only now getting the level of attention it deserves from producers, nutritionists and veterinarians, Drackley says.
THEN AND NOW
Until recently, he says producers were focused on the cost of feeding calves rather than having outcome-based goals that focused on return-on-investment.
As recently as the 1990s, producers commonly fed calves 1.25 pounds a day of milk replacer because the dairy industry thought that an adequate amount.
More recently, the last National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) survey, done in 2014, shows that the average amount of milk or milk replacer fed at the time – only a decade ago – was 5.7 liters per day.
“Now, many farms are feeding 6 liters to more than 8 liters per day,” Drackley estimates. “I anticipate that when the next survey comes out we’ll find the amount fed has moved up even further.”
As an aside, Drackley says one of the best inventions in the past 20 years has been the introduction of 3-liter and 4-liter calf bottles.
“We shouldn’t let the feeding equipment or the bag size determine what our calf nutrition program is going to be,” he says.
As calves have had more and better-quality nutrition they’ve grown at a faster rate and have had increased frame size as well.
“You take two calves born on the same day and feed one 6 quarts a day versus 4 quarts a day for the other one, and you can see the difference in growth by 2 weeks of age,” he says. “It’s very clearly evident.”
Along with that, as the amount of milk fed has increased, Drackley says the data shows pre-weaning death losses have declined markedly. For years, he says U.S. death losses were stuck at 8% to 11% of calves alive at 48 hours of age. By 2014, the NAHMS data shows the percentages had dropped to 6.4%. He attributes the decrease in death losses of young calves to the increase in amount of milk fed.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
Drackley says he believes calf nutrition is an area of business opportunity for bovine veterinarians. “It could be developed as part of a calf oversight program and would provide much-needed services to dairy producers,” he says.
Drackley is quick to emphasize that he is not trying to tell veterinarians how to manage or structure their business. Rather, he is offering an idea on how a calf-focused practice, with early emphasis on colostrum management and nutrition, might work.
“The type and amount of liquid feed that the farm is using, management protocols for both liquid and starter selection of the starter feed, weaning procedures and management are all very important components to health management and are important to integrate in terms of outcomes,” he says.
Another important undertaking veterinarians could address, Drackley believes, would be creating a transition plan from the calf nutrition program to a heifer nutrition program. He says producers would benefit from a more seamless flow from one to the other.
Figure 1 shows an overview of Drackley’s key components for a calf oversight program.
RESOURCES TO CONSIDER
Drackley says there are many tools and various apps available that can help veterinarians record data and assess calf health and performance.
One tool he references as being particularly useful is the 2021 NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine), which provides nutrient requirements for dairy cattle.
“Chapter 10 of the 2021 NASEM provides state of the art information on calf nutrition and feeding,” Drackley says.
“Some helpful equations are provided that can be put into a spreadsheet and are useful for predicting calf performance and how that can change in different environmental conditions,” he adds.
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