Calves spend as many as 20 hours per day – or 80 percent of their time – lying down. Research suggests that just as cows make more milk when they spend more time lying down, calves are better performers when they spend more time lying down. It also signals they’re comfortable and content in …
“Your mother was right!” said Sarah Mills-Lloyd, a veterinarian and Oconto County Extension ag agent. Cleanliness is important – for calves, too.
Respiratory disease can be devastating to a calf-rearing enterprise. That’s why it’s important to catch it early and nip it in the bud. University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinarian Terri Ollivett advocated for establishing a daily routine for finding individual sick calves, establishing a sc…
Merck Animal Health has introduced two new Dairy Care365 animal-handling training video modules that focus on caring for calves. The first covers care and handling of the newborn calf, from birth through the first two weeks of life. The second addresses handling and stockmanship from weaning…
The primary goal of a dairy-replacement nutrition program should be optimizing net profit. That’s balancing rearing cost against lifetime performance of those animals.
Automated calf-feeding is drawing increasing attention in the Upper-Midwest dairy industry. Even though most dairies still house pre-weaned calves in individual hutches or pens, automated feeding and group pens are being adopted at an accelerating rate.
Newborn calves enter the world with no more than 3 to 4 percent body fat. So while winter drags on, the goal of every farmer is not only to keep animals warm but also to make sure they are properly fed to avoid decreased performance and weight loss.
Optimal management and environment at calving should attempt to accommodate the natural physiological and behavioral changes a cow undergoes when delivering her calf.
Water has been coined the “forgotten nutrient,” probably because it doesn’t carry a price tag like milk replacer — or whole milk and calf starter — that dairy producers feed their calves. But when water consumption isn’t where it should be it can be costly indeed in terms of reduced calf gro…
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