Starting Strong – Calf Care

By Ann Hoskins, Vita Plus calf products manager
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.

This past winter, the team at Jauquet's Hillview Dairy LLC in Luxemburg, Wisconsin, completed an addition on its cross-ventilated barn.  The addition, which is next to the maternity pens, includes two heated newborn calf warming rooms.

Transition to the next generation can bring about a lot of change and disruption to a farm’s day-to-day operations. However, the Speirs family of Shiloh Dairy LLC in Brillion, Wisconsin, has made it a smooth process by focusing on consistent animal care and continual improvement. 

In this edition of Calf Chat, Dr. Lucas Mitchell provides his spring calf care checklist to help calf raisers prepare equipment and facilities for the upcoming change in seasons.

By Dr. Lucas Mitchell, Vita Plus calf and heifer specialist
It's a two-step process to introduce forages to calves. First, we need to "turn" them into ruminants, then we need to let them be ruminants. Forages may play a role in the first part, and they certainly play a role in the second part.

By Nellie Mitchell, Granular group customer success manager
If you have ever participated in an unsuccessful team meeting, then you may want to try the G.O.A.L. method to help run an efficient team meeting.

By Dr. Sara Barber and Dan Bakker, Foundation Livestock Service
The secret to a best-cost calf program is simple, repeatable systems with timely feedback to frontline staff performing the work. Every problem is the result of a broken process. Fix the process and the problem will go away – every time.

By Dr. Noah Litherland, Vita Plus dairy youngstock technical specialist
Calf care during the first 24 hours after birth has a significant impact on calf performance during the nursery phase and beyond. Make sure you also provide calf pens with these eight key attributes to give your calves the start they need.

The key to growing healthy calves is consistency. To help feed calves more consistently, the calf team at Wilbar Dairy started weighing water and milk replacer a few years ago.

Dana Allen-Tully, partner and dairy operations manager at Gar-Lin Dairy LLC in Eyota, Minnesota, was looking to design new calf facilities. She recognized the workforce was changing and wanted facilities that provided a nice work environment for employees that also allowed for workflow efficiency. Autofeeders seemed like the right fit and construction on a new barn was completed in October 2016.

In this edition of Calf Chat, Dr. Noah Litherland discusses common milk replacer ingredients and how to read a milk replacer tag.

By Donovan Nelson, Vita Plus quality assurance and formulation specialist
Quality calf feeds can’t be made without quality ingredients and manufacturing processes. Make sure your feed manufacturer has protocols like these in place to produce the excellent calf feed your calves deserve.

By Dave Chamberlin, Vita Plus swine technical sales manager, and Garrett Rozeboom, Vita Plus swine technical services manager
Although we focus on animals with only one stomach, many of the practices we use to manage pigs translate across species. These are our top five rules for managing ventilation in swine barns.

By Dr. Curt Vlietstra, Boehringer Ingelheim senior professional services veterinarian
The Bovine Viral Diarrhea (BVD) we see on farms today is different from the BVD that was first identified in the 1940s. While it may not be as obvious as it once was, timely vaccinations and good management can help protect your future herd investment.

By Dr. Lucas Mitchell, Vita Plus calf and heifer specialist
The easiest way to know if we are feeding calves the proper amount of milk is by paying attention to how they perform. Look for these five indicators the next time you walk through the calf barn.

The team at Birchen Farms Inc. in Pearl City, Illinois, pre-fills condiment cups with iodine and stores the cups in buckets in the maternity area. Iodine is always ready and available when a newborn calf needs its navel dipped. The disposable cups prevent cross-contamination between calves.