The door of John Kingston’s calf shed looks out across the cow paddocks and on to the runway at Cork Airport. Over the next few weeks, the sound of planes taking off and landing will be dimmed by the sound of bawling calves. Two hundred and twenty-five cows calved on John Kingston’s farm in January and February last year and a similar number are expected this year.
Mean calving date is 18 February, but John expects calving to start in the last few days of January. There are over 300 cows to calve. The herd is now mostly Jersey crossbred, having come from a higher-yielding Holstein Friesian base over the last decade.
About 80 cows are in calf to Belgian Blue and these calves are sold at five weeks of age. The Jersey bull calves are sold off the farm at 10 days old and all dairy-bred heifer calves are reared on the farm. At peak, there are about 160 calves on the farm in spring.
Paddy Mackey is the dedicated calf rearer on the farm. Paddy is in his 70s and works four or five hours a day just with the calves for 10 or 11 weeks every spring. Paddy used to work full-time on the farm, but now he just looks after the calves.
“Having a dedicated calf rearer is a huge help,” says John. “Don’t get me wrong, we still get lots of problems with calves and always have areas to improve on, but being able to delegate responsibility to one person who isn’t rushing around doing other jobs at the same time is massive.”
Cows are drafted out of the cubicle shed and moved to a large loose pen a couple of days before calving. The cows calve in the loose pen. The calves are fed three to four litres of pooled colostrum using a nipple feeder as soon as possible after calving. Only calves that don’t suck the nipple feeder are fed colostrum with a stomach tube.
John says pooling colostrum and milk isn’t ideal, but the herd has been tested for Johne’s disease with no positive results, so he is happy enough to pool the milk. But if the Johne’s status was not known or if he had cows in the herd that were positive for Johne’s disease, then he wouldn’t be using pooled colostrum.
Local man Tom Tobin does three nights a week on calving watch. John does two nights on calving and full-time employee Alan Reardon does the other two nights so between the three of them someone is on duty every night.
The calves are fed and tagged and the calf is registered there and then. John uses Herdwatch to register the calves and a Herdwatch profile is set up on the trio’s phones, so all three can register the calves when they are being tagged.
The navels are dipped with methylated spirits and the calves are removed from the cow about 30 minutes or so after calving, or as soon as the calf is licked, and brought to the calf shed. There they are kept in pens of five for two feeds of pooled second-milking colostrum with the handheld nipple feeder. When they are drinking well, they are moved to pens of 10 and are fed using the multiple nipple feeders that hang on the gate.
The cows are moved to the colostrum bunch where they remain for four days or until they are out of milk withdrawal. Different colour tail tape is used to identify the cows in this mob. While they are milked separately to the main herd, the first and second milkings are collected in buckets for feeding the young calves.
Calves are fed whole milk for the first few weeks. This is pumped from the dairy to the calf shed and stored in an old bulk tank with an agitator to help keep it fresh. The milk from this tank is also pumped to the calves. There is a meter on the pump nozzle, so Paddy knows exactly how much milk goes to each pen.
When this calf shed begins to get full, the first 65 calves are moved to a separate shed and fed milk replacer through a trailed calf feeder towed behind the quad. The older calves are turned out to grass and fed once a day in late March, depending on the weather.
In 2016, the Kingston herd produced 480kg of milk solids per cow from about 900kg of meal per cow. Four hectares of the 84ha milking platform is in fodder beet, most of which is grazed in situ by milking cows at the shoulders of the year.
Cryptosporidium
Also speaking at the event was vet Norma Brady. She was speaking about the management of scouring calves, particularly calves with cryptosporidium. Crypto is a very serious type of scour caused by a parasite. More than 20% of all dead calves under a month old submitted for postmortem across the country tested positive for crypto.
She said that it is an extremely infectious type of scour transmitted via the “faecal-oral route”. So infected calves pass the parasite eggs in their dung and this is then ingested by other calves and the scour spreads. The disease can be spread through dirty footwear, in trailers, clothes and through feeding utensils. Therefore, hygiene is critical.
She said that Ireland’s damp climate is ideal for the build-up of disease. Keeping beds clean and dry is a huge help. The classic indicator of a good bed is to be able to kneel on the straw without your knees getting wet.
On disinfectants, she said that the parasite is resistant to many disinfectants used on farms, so make sure the product you are using is licensed to kill crypto. However, she said that there is no point in putting disinfectant on to existing dirt – buildings and facilities must be clean first.
She said that the mistake many farmers make is to reduce the amount of milk fed in the face of a scour outbreak and that this is counterproductive as the calves become dehydrated and lose weight.
When asked if farmers who have had an outbreak of crypto in the past should use halofuginone lactate (Halocur) this spring, she said that she wouldn’t use it right away: “If the herd is calving in one block and there was a good break between the last calving, then I wouldn’t advise the use of Halocur-type products. Firstly, they are expensive and secondly, I think the calves need to be able to build up some type of immunity to the disease and if you are using blanket treatment then this immunity will not build up.”
In Brief
John Kingston calves 78% of his herd in the first six weeks.Calves are fed 3l to 4l of colostrum within the first 30 minutes of life.Calves are fed whole milk for the first few weeks and are then switched to milk replacer.Feed extra milk to scouring calves to keep them hydrated.Calves on the Kingston farm are bedded on straw, but the straw is placed over a bed of woodchip and topped up daily.Hygiene is critical to prevent a disease outbreak and to prevent the spread of scour in the face of disease.When treating sick animals, only give the right dose to the right animal for the right duration to prevent antimicrobial resistance. Read more
Focus: calves 2017
The door of John Kingston’s calf shed looks out across the cow paddocks and on to the runway at Cork Airport. Over the next few weeks, the sound of planes taking off and landing will be dimmed by the sound of bawling calves. Two hundred and twenty-five cows calved on John Kingston’s farm in January and February last year and a similar number are expected this year.
Mean calving date is 18 February, but John expects calving to start in the last few days of January. There are over 300 cows to calve. The herd is now mostly Jersey crossbred, having come from a higher-yielding Holstein Friesian base over the last decade.
About 80 cows are in calf to Belgian Blue and these calves are sold at five weeks of age. The Jersey bull calves are sold off the farm at 10 days old and all dairy-bred heifer calves are reared on the farm. At peak, there are about 160 calves on the farm in spring.
Paddy Mackey is the dedicated calf rearer on the farm. Paddy is in his 70s and works four or five hours a day just with the calves for 10 or 11 weeks every spring. Paddy used to work full-time on the farm, but now he just looks after the calves.
“Having a dedicated calf rearer is a huge help,” says John. “Don’t get me wrong, we still get lots of problems with calves and always have areas to improve on, but being able to delegate responsibility to one person who isn’t rushing around doing other jobs at the same time is massive.”
Cows are drafted out of the cubicle shed and moved to a large loose pen a couple of days before calving. The cows calve in the loose pen. The calves are fed three to four litres of pooled colostrum using a nipple feeder as soon as possible after calving. Only calves that don’t suck the nipple feeder are fed colostrum with a stomach tube.
John says pooling colostrum and milk isn’t ideal, but the herd has been tested for Johne’s disease with no positive results, so he is happy enough to pool the milk. But if the Johne’s status was not known or if he had cows in the herd that were positive for Johne’s disease, then he wouldn’t be using pooled colostrum.
Local man Tom Tobin does three nights a week on calving watch. John does two nights on calving and full-time employee Alan Reardon does the other two nights so between the three of them someone is on duty every night.
The calves are fed and tagged and the calf is registered there and then. John uses Herdwatch to register the calves and a Herdwatch profile is set up on the trio’s phones, so all three can register the calves when they are being tagged.
The navels are dipped with methylated spirits and the calves are removed from the cow about 30 minutes or so after calving, or as soon as the calf is licked, and brought to the calf shed. There they are kept in pens of five for two feeds of pooled second-milking colostrum with the handheld nipple feeder. When they are drinking well, they are moved to pens of 10 and are fed using the multiple nipple feeders that hang on the gate.
The cows are moved to the colostrum bunch where they remain for four days or until they are out of milk withdrawal. Different colour tail tape is used to identify the cows in this mob. While they are milked separately to the main herd, the first and second milkings are collected in buckets for feeding the young calves.
Calves are fed whole milk for the first few weeks. This is pumped from the dairy to the calf shed and stored in an old bulk tank with an agitator to help keep it fresh. The milk from this tank is also pumped to the calves. There is a meter on the pump nozzle, so Paddy knows exactly how much milk goes to each pen.
When this calf shed begins to get full, the first 65 calves are moved to a separate shed and fed milk replacer through a trailed calf feeder towed behind the quad. The older calves are turned out to grass and fed once a day in late March, depending on the weather.
In 2016, the Kingston herd produced 480kg of milk solids per cow from about 900kg of meal per cow. Four hectares of the 84ha milking platform is in fodder beet, most of which is grazed in situ by milking cows at the shoulders of the year.
Cryptosporidium
Also speaking at the event was vet Norma Brady. She was speaking about the management of scouring calves, particularly calves with cryptosporidium. Crypto is a very serious type of scour caused by a parasite. More than 20% of all dead calves under a month old submitted for postmortem across the country tested positive for crypto.
She said that it is an extremely infectious type of scour transmitted via the “faecal-oral route”. So infected calves pass the parasite eggs in their dung and this is then ingested by other calves and the scour spreads. The disease can be spread through dirty footwear, in trailers, clothes and through feeding utensils. Therefore, hygiene is critical.
She said that Ireland’s damp climate is ideal for the build-up of disease. Keeping beds clean and dry is a huge help. The classic indicator of a good bed is to be able to kneel on the straw without your knees getting wet.
On disinfectants, she said that the parasite is resistant to many disinfectants used on farms, so make sure the product you are using is licensed to kill crypto. However, she said that there is no point in putting disinfectant on to existing dirt – buildings and facilities must be clean first.
She said that the mistake many farmers make is to reduce the amount of milk fed in the face of a scour outbreak and that this is counterproductive as the calves become dehydrated and lose weight.
When asked if farmers who have had an outbreak of crypto in the past should use halofuginone lactate (Halocur) this spring, she said that she wouldn’t use it right away: “If the herd is calving in one block and there was a good break between the last calving, then I wouldn’t advise the use of Halocur-type products. Firstly, they are expensive and secondly, I think the calves need to be able to build up some type of immunity to the disease and if you are using blanket treatment then this immunity will not build up.”
In Brief
John Kingston calves 78% of his herd in the first six weeks.Calves are fed 3l to 4l of colostrum within the first 30 minutes of life.Calves are fed whole milk for the first few weeks and are then switched to milk replacer.Feed extra milk to scouring calves to keep them hydrated.Calves on the Kingston farm are bedded on straw, but the straw is placed over a bed of woodchip and topped up daily.Hygiene is critical to prevent a disease outbreak and to prevent the spread of scour in the face of disease.When treating sick animals, only give the right dose to the right animal for the right duration to prevent antimicrobial resistance. Read more
Focus: calves 2017
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