Dairy Calves 2024

Fair play if your set works and seems to working well, on my travels I seen two brothers who rear 250 calves similar to your set up and they had an oil fire house heating boiler set up in the calf shed with two copper cylinders up on the wall and on a timer switch and temperature setting for to heat the water, and a milk trolley with a fuel hose to fill the teat feeders. They use to draw the water from the house in barrels to the calf shed and said the boiler in the shed reared better calves with milk at constant temperature.

The black calf id a lucky dip, too many variables leading to you landing on what would be close to a JEX. Ask the question why are the black calf getting this rep. It's very simple. Messing and not focused on calf quality. The factors are reducing cow weight, pre registered of calves, crap beef merit in bulls used on farm, messing with the breed/ sure at registration, very short gestation bulls used on cows with even shorter gestation. Any number of these leads to a lucky dip in the ring. One bitten, twice shy.

Back to the by product, do you view milk or the calf as the by product of the dairy industry, has to the be one, if farmers aren't keeping these animals until the hook or close enough to the hook

Here's the definition of by product an incidental or secondary product made in the manufacture or synthesis of something else

It's very easy to answer for 90% of farmers at ai time, it's to have the cow in the parlour next year. There is no getting away for that. If they were interested in the calf, most would be interested in holding the calf to weaning, not offloading as quick as possible

To a point your right ….they will look good as calves buried in straw …shiny coats from heap of whole milk but they won’t have the carcase weight or confirmation when it counts

The dairy farmer working his 50 hour week in the spring isn't going to want to be married to a calving jack to calf these cows though, I gave up using Belgian blues here every 5th calving you'd end up with a monster calf and a screwed up cow wasn't worth it

No calf buyer is going to expect a dairy farmer to be welded to a calving jack, dealing with downer cows after calving, and then throw the springtime routine into the mix, its all about finding a happy medium.

The only real way to solve it a 2 prong approach. Correcting issues with breeding will take 2-3 generations to resolve. There is no magic bullet.

1. The Cow Side

Breeding cows with a bit bigger pelvic width and a touch extra weight. This improves the weight of the prime cuts and makes calving easier. How do we achieve this. EBI needs tweaking. While the index has helped profitability, it has completely forgot about the calf output and the stature of the animal. A pat on the back is about 2 foot away from a kick in the backside

2. The Bull side.

More focus on carcase weight and confirmation, while still keeping an eye on the calving ease and gestation length. This is the work that has to be done by the pedigree societies and pedigree breeders.

Mix the above 2 together in a straw or bull and you are on the road to improving.

On a side note, I struggle to see why the ICBF are not looking at the metric of weight with dairy cows, even 20% of the herd annually. It's the key one with SCEP and dairy welfare schemes

Carcase weight is beef farmers litres in the tank. Grading is our solids, and the grid is A+B-C

I’ve calved Charolais …limos …simental as well as aa and he ….rarely an issue ….one c section that was a fr calf mother had twisted womb …..feeding in dry period and transition is key ……dairy farmers have to give a bit too has to be more about it than short gestation and calf out gap soon as

@Siamsa Sessions my brother does it with about 15, usually all Fr as that's all that is available end or September start October. They are on milk until December and then out to a sheltered paddock sometime in February. There is more work with them, more feeding / straw into the shed as they are in longer. But they thrive well when they hit good grass in April & he generally manages to get them killed at 24 months. He would have trouble with frozen water and the like plus carrying buckets of milk on frozen yards is no fun.

I remember in 2010 when the hard frost hit, he did have a lot of trouble with sick calves due to the very cold temperatures but that was a one off.

He picks them up from 2 / 3 farmers that do winter milk. Anywhere between €80 - €120 each.

Agree on the feeding and well done on adding beef value to your calves. The farmer knows their cows the best and what can work. If you are working on it that way, you will start to build up customers who will do repeat business annually. These are vital links

Where I was coming from was even the potential to add 20kg the national average, would have the potential to add approx 10kg carcase weight to calves. This could be the difference for many to move to profit when couple with a better quality beef bull suitable for the dairy herd. For the ICBF they need to urgently see the wood from the trees, sorry calves from the cows

Kill the traditional heifers at 21 months at 250 kg dw. Believe it or not, It’s not the wee angus that’s the problem.