HEIFERMAX

Steve has just added an interesting article to the resource page about the role of fibre in the diet of ruminants.

If you have any comments about this or other articles, we would love to hear from you.

If you raise calves on a dairy and have 3 minutes to spare, why not go to the “Web Survey” page and answer our short survey?

Your answers will help us to help you better.

A range of  factors has combined to make the P.C.R.A.A. committee decide to hold its annual conference in conjunction with  International Dairy Week at Tatura.

The high quality speakers the P.C.R.A.A. attracts to its conference need around 12 months notice of an event. Consequently, due to the short time frame between making this decision and the date of the 2010 IDW, the P.C.R.A.A. will not hold a conference this coming year. In its place, they are planning to have a field day in the middle of the year - the details of this are not yet finalised but will be published on the P.C.R.A.A. (www.calfrearers.asn.au) website well prior to the day.

The 2011 conference will be held in the Tatura Sports Club, which has been booked for the 17^th Jan 2011; this is the first and quietest day of IDW. The venue can seat well over 200 and can provide morning and afternoon teas and lunch as well as an à la carte dinner.

This decision to change the venue will give the P.C.R.A.A. greater exposure to dairy farmers, who are the people who rear the majority of calves in Australia.

This coming year they will share a stand at IDW with HEIFERMAX, with a view to promoting the P.C.R.A.A. to a wider range of dairy farmers, many of whom do not know we exist.

We look forward to talking to farmers about their heifers & hearing about their successes and failures. See you there!

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are accepted management tools in many industries. Quality control programmes such as ISO 9000 and HACCP rely on them to give consistent results, leading to uniformity of the end product or result.

The trend to single enterprise dairies milking large herds of cows and employing labour to do this has lead to problems not encountered on the multi-enterprise, family run farms of the past. Here one family member did the same job and knew exactly how it was done and what the expected outcomes were, therefore the results were consistent. Modern dairies need to have procedures in place to ensure consistent results, even though multiple staff members may be involved in a particular task. 

The most economic end product of heifer rearing is a well grown, healthy heifer, ready to calve at ≈ 24 months, capable of milking to her genetic potential and of remaining in the herd for several years. While there are many ways of achieving this result, it can be useful to standardise methods on individual farms, so that everyone involved knows how specific tasks are performed. This is particularly important on farms which have various people caring for heifers and conversely, for farms where one particular person cares for calves. Single calf carer farms tend to have consistent results when that staff member is working but if they are absent, results often deteriorate, so the SOPs are useful for stand in staff members.

  Read more »

The north west of Tasmania has suffered badly in the last couple of months with heavy rains making paddocks very wet. Some farmers have had difficulty finding clean ground to calve cows down on and as a result, calf health in the district has suffered.

In contrast, the very first HEIFERMAX clients, who run a herd of ≈ 900 cows in that same area, have had their usual excellent results despite the season.

Two years ago the farm owners approached HEIFERMAX for advice on heifer management. They listened carefully, read the written report they were given and implemented the recommendations in it. Since then, they have calved the whole herd down three times and have lost only one heifer calf. Overall heifer health on the farm is excellent and no matter what age group one looks at, the heifers always have a good body score, shiny coats, bright eyes and abundant energy.

I know, having been a farmer for 30 years, that coping with mud & rain can be disheartening but this farm is positive proof that extra care in adverse conditions will pay off.

HEIFERMAX is proud to announce that it has just formalised a business arrangement

 with Dr. Steve Sutherland, Ph.D., who is a ruminant nutritionist with multi-species

experience in both temperate and tropical climates. Dr. Sutherland’s passion

and enthusiasm for his work, will, coupled with his undoubted expertise,

deliver benefit to dairy farmers throughout S.E. Asia, Australia and New Zealand. 

The services Steve offers will complement the heifer management services

delivered by HEIFERMAX.

Recent widespread heavy rains across much of southern Australia have turned many calving paddocks into a sea of mud.

Cows calving in wet, muddy paddocks are more likely to contract mastitis and metritis. Calves which are dropped in the mud at birth are almost certainly going to become ill and possibly to die.

Appropriate care for wet and dirty calves in the first day or so of life can help to minimise the effects of a poor start.

Steps to help prevent disease are:-

·         More frequent collection of calves from the paddock

·         Dip navels in the paddock before transport

·         Administer measured high quality colostrum (use a Colostrometer) as soon as possible (some farms take colostrum into the paddock, to ensure early consumption)

·         Colostrum should be given at 10% of bodyweight in a single feed

·         Dip navel again on entry into the calf barn

·         If a calf’s hair is wet, either put a calf coat on the calf or make a small pen from hay bales and snuggle the calf into the hay, so that it can warm up

·         Consider using a heat lamp for the first few hours of life

·         Feed 1^st milking colostrum as the second feed, to ensure adequate antibodies for absorption and because it has a very high level of nutrients

·         Continue to use transition milk (don’t dilute with milk from the hospital herd) for the first week of life, to ensure calves have plenty of nutrients to help fight infection

·         Monitor these calves regularly, as scouring is likely to be a major issue in the first few days of life

·         Navel or joint ill may appear in calves about a week old. Call the vet if you have a calf with this problem.

A little bit of extra TLC can minimise the effects that a wet and dirty start in life has on calves.

Farmers often think that losing a few calves a year is not a big problem. In fact, dead calves are actually the tip of the iceberg. Related illness and poor feed conversion efficiencies & growth rates in surviving calves cost far more money than the value of the dead calves.

Heifers are going to cost money to rear; particularly when money is short, it needs to be spent where it will give the greatest return. Low milk prices often result in farmers attempting to save money by reducing the costs of calf feeds. Calves which are not adequately fed are more likely to become ill & die. Experience of large scale calf rearers would say that, in general, for every dead calf there are about 5 sick ones.

The death of only 2% of heifers reared is often viewed as a good result. The following illustration estimates the unseen costs and lost productivity associated with 2 deaths from a group of 100 calves. Using “middle of the road” figures based on a Holstein herd, the “iceberg” shows the hidden costs of economising on feed and other rearing inputs.

Whether the figures are exactly accurate for every herd is not important; the point is that by cutting costs to save cents now, the enterprise will be losing dollars both now and in the longer term. Long term productivity will certainly be compromised, possibly at a time when milk prices have risen and dairies are looking for maximum productivity to make up ground lost to poor prices.

The above illustration calculates the costs associated with sick calves and associated lost productivity to be a startling $53,340. Read more »

Time spent recently delivering heifer management classes in Western Australia was very informative.

My interest in the W.A. dairy industry was kindled at the 2008 Australian Dairy Conference, held in Launceston. The chairman of Western Dairy made a presentation about the industry which painted the state and its industry in a rosy light.

Western Australians have always had a reputation for being very progressive, and many innovative agricultural ideas have come from W.A. It appears that their dairy industry is no exception; having declined in dairy numbers, the W.A. industry has made a concerted effort to attract new players into the industry and to consolidate its position in the global market place.

W.A. has 2.1% of Australian dairy farms but produces 3.7% of the milk; this is a testament to the attitude of these farmers and is a prediction of the future success of their industry.

The heifer management day, run on-farm near Busselton, was well organised and promoted. This ensured that it was incredibly well attended and the 5 hour presentation provoked a wide range of interesting questions. It was stimulating to present information to such a receptive audience and although some farmers had to leave mid-afternoon to milk, many stayed on to ask more searching questions.

I look forward to future interaction with this forward thinking sector of the Australian dairy industry.

The Professional Calf Rearers’ Association of Australia is holding its annual conference on 1st July 2009 at the Airport Motel, 33 Ardlie St. Attwood, Vic. 3049.

Click here to view the flyer.