HEIFERMAX

I am just writing the report required of me by RIRDC at the conclusion of my year as Tasmanian Rural Woman of the Year. In writing this report, I gave some thought to the question of what I perceived to be the greatest challenge facing the calf rearing industry.

I have seen 100’s of 1000’s of calves being reared for a variety of reasons, both within Australia and in other parts of the world. My belief is that the greatest problem facing the calf rearing industry is a common thread uniting these different enterprises and different countries.

It surmounts the issues of inadequate colostrum administration, dependence on or overuse of antibiotics, unstable markets for finished products, difficulty retaining reliable staff or any of the other problems besetting the industry, which first spring to mind when asked this question.

The greatest challenge in most facets of primary production including calf rearing is the difficulty to get farmers to accept the need for change. The industry is bedevilled by the mantra that “my father or grandfather did it this way, so it will work for me”.

Farmers, being principally males, are fascinated by new gadgets, so change in the form of innovative technology such as motor vehicles versus draught horses, electronic scales, rotary or rapid exit dairies, air seeders, computerised in-bail feeding systems, GPS technology, etc. have found speedier acceptance than the less tangible but easily demonstrable benefits of changes such as faecal egg counting, rotational grazing and tube feeding colostrum to dairy calves.

Adaptation of an industry is necessary for its continued success, but can be hard to induce. Methods to promote change need to respect the existing viewpoint of participants in the industry before attempting to convince them to accept the revised knowledge and implement change.

There are two key factors in achieving change.

• The first is to get people to admit that a system is imperfect or that change is necessary.
• The second is to acknowledge that most people are scared of change. Fear of change can manifest itself as scepticism of the “new” ways, as defence of the “old” ways or as total repudiation of change. Change can be perceived as lack of respect for the upholders of entrenched methods and therefore cannot easily be forced on an industry; ideas must be allowed to take root and to mature gradually. Once the idea has matured the change will be implemented without resistance.

Changes are often most easily introduced by getting the innovator in the community to change; the less adventurous will often follow suit.

Changes in the calf rearing industry are necessary to adapt to expansion of scientific knowledge, increases in per capita production & herd size, altered animal welfare requirements and changes in dairy staff demographics. Until a farmer acknowledges that his system is not perfect, nothing will change. I know that there are many farmers out there who accept unnecessarily high morbidity and mortality rates in their young calves and who accept very high cull rates in their heifers before their second lactation and do not consider it an important cost to their enterprise.

I would challenge all dairy farmers to think about these percentages on your farm and if you are losing more than 1% of young calves (i.e. calves up to 12 weeks), don’t know the percentage of young calves are growing at the required ADG or if you are culling more than 15% of heifers before they enter the dairy for their second lactation, then you need to carefully examine your management practices, because poor management is probably costing you a lot of money.

More importantly, if you don’t even know what these figures are on your farm, then your heifer management definitely needs an overhaul.

To sum up, the very successful dairies and calf rearing enterprises are the ones who have admitted that there was room for improvement within their systems and have embraced change to the benefit of the enterprise.