Facility design

Keeping calves clean, dry and comfortable is the hallmark of a successful calf facility. Properly designed calf housing can positively impact calf performance, growth, feed efficiency and labor.

In 1960, Gilbert and Carol Helt purchased a farm in Dane, Wisconsin, and started milking 30 cows. Gilbert’s son, Dale, and his wife, Diane, purchased the farm in the late 1980s and updated the milking parlor in 1999.

While impossible to avoid heat stress altogether, the type of housing we offer dairy youngstock can influence their ability to cope. What setup is optimal to keep calves cool on your operation? The Vita Plus calf heat risk audit could help you find out.

What facilities provide the best environment to raise calves and heifers?  Answering that question requires us to first consider each farm’s specific needs and management systems. In March, two Midwest dairy farms opened their doors to a group of dairy producers on a tour organized by Vita Plus. 

The key to a good calf barn ventilation audit is to evaluate the air quality in many different scenarios. Weather can change the calf environment quickly. Monitoring air should be part of your daily checklist. If problems persist, enlist a trusted consultant to assess your options.

The owners of McAllister Family Dairy in New Vienna, Iowa, wanted to build a new calf care facility that could provide the best environment possible for raising healthy calves. When designing the facility, they focused on excellent ventilation and labor efficiency. In early 2022, calves moved into the new barn, which has space for 98 pre- and post-weaned calves. The farm managers are pleased with how the facility has met their goals in the last 18 months.

Between 20 and 40 calves are born each day at Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy, LLC in Kewaunee, Wisconsin. With exceptional animal care as a top priority on the farm, the team continually looks for opportunities to learn, evolve, and adopt new strategies to minimize stress – both for the animals and the employees – during each calving.

By Noah Litherland, Ph.D. | Whether you are thinking about building a new youngstock facility or renovating an existing facility, the following features can increase the functionality of the barn for both calves and calf caretakers.

When Mike and Tim Wettstein of Level-Vu Acres in Cambellsport, Wisconsin, built a new freestall barn for their heifers a few years ago, they had an opportunity to experiment with a new system to raise their preweaned calves and young heifers. The result is group housing that is easier to clean and manage.

By Noah Litherland, Ph.D. | When building or updating heifer facilities, producers must choose what feed barrier(s) to incorporate into the heifer pens. Consider these questions to help you identify the best option for your heifers and management system.

In this segment, Dr. Noah Litherland describes how rail-feeding systems and group pens are successfully used to raise preweaned calves.

Felten Farms in St. Cloud, Wisconsin, milks about 400 cows and raises all its heifers onsite with mostly family labor. Eric Felten takes the lead on calf feeding and care. He said he began exploring ways to improve calf management a couple of years ago to increase the efficiency and performance in this area of the farm.

In this edition of Calf Chat, Dr. Lucas Mitchell shares the three critical components of an integrated pest management (IPM) plan to reduce flies - and the stress and disease they can cause - in your youngstock operation.

Dr. Bethany Dado-Senn | The latest concern and next frontier for dairy cattle environmental management is the mitigation of heat stress in youngstock. This has been particularly apparent the past few weeks as most of the Midwest has seen multiple heat waves. If you’re looking to provide heat stress abatement to your calves or heifers, here are a few options you might consider.

Dr. Noah Litherland | A challenging heifer cycle occurs when a portion of the heifer development phase does not go as planned and results in heifers that have lower-than-expected rates of growth, lung consolidation, or increased rate of non-completion of first lactation. The net result is often a reduced return on investment from the heifer program. This article, the second in a two-part series, discuss the impacts of management, labor and facilities.

Loehr Farms, LLC in Eden, Wisconsin, is a sixth-generation dairy farm.  After a herd expansion, the Loehr family built a new calf barn with an autofeeder.  Herdsman Ryan Loehr said the autofeeder allows him to spend more time with the calves that need it.