With the extra challenge of the pandemic coronavirus and resulting COVID-19, this Spring's planting season is on pace to be a crazy time for everyone trying to get a crop in the ground. Here are a few reminders of items to make sure you check off your list this April.
Weaning is a stressful event and combined with low intakes and not meeting nutritional needs, this can lead to health issues and lower performance. The return on investment in a good starter program is selling a higher percentage of your calf crop. Here are 4 simple components to a starter program.
When someone says minimize shrink in dairy feed, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Is it feed bunk management, proper defacing or feed waste? Shrink is all of that and much more. A different definition of shrink is dairy feed that was not consistently consumed or adequately utilized by the animal. Examples include: •Unprocessed corn silage that passes through into manure. • Commodities blown away as a delivery truck tries to deliver feed on a windy day. • Feed consumed by the cow that she didn’t need or was fed in incorrect amounts. In all these cases, shrink impacts your bottom line. So, how can you combat shrink and reduce the impact on your wallet?
Water plays essential roles in hydrating a calf and in rumen development, not only in the summer, but year-round. Baby calves are on a liquid diet, so it may seem that offering water is not necessary, but that is not true. Offering water separate from milk will increase weight gains by increasing starter intake. Best practice is to provide calves access to clean, fresh, warm water from the first day of life. However, according to the National Dairy Health Monitoring System (USDA, 2014), the average age of heifers when first offered water in the United States is 17.3 days. The age when first offered water tends to go down as herd size increases (see table), and no category of herd size is (on average) offering water the first day of life.
Troy Wistube, PH.D | Purina Director of Dairy Technical Solutions
Joe McDonald | Nutritionist