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The dairy industry has talked itself into a crisis over calf welfare, according to the head of dairy research at Teagasc Padraig French.
Speaking at the Teagasc dairy conference, French said there was no data to support “the frenzy of conversation that has been around calf welfare over the last couple of months”.
French countered that the crisis was based predominately on “rumours and some type of morbid sensationalism”.
He said: “We're talking about what's happening on our neighbours’ farms. We heard it in the pub – some fella's calves are dying somewhere or other – and we're spreading these rumours, and we've heard these rumours going on around the country and being talked about at board levels across most of our co-ops.”
We have extraordinarily low calf mortality. The data would say it has not increased with expansion, in fact, the opposite is the case
Data
Outlining data to suggest otherwise, French said the number of calves that died or were born dead had fallen from 2% to 1.5% from 2011 to 2019. On calf mortality over the first 28 days, he said Ireland was low at by international standards at around 5%, bettered only by Scandinavian countries at 4%.
French said mortality was an excellent indicator of calf welfare and most international competitors had a mortality figure of 10% by comparison.
“We have extraordinarily low calf mortality. The data would say it has not increased with expansion, in fact, the opposite is the case,” he said.
Myth
“Another myth that's out there is that if calves are valueless, dairy farmers won't look after them. There is absolutely no evidence there to suggest that. Calf mortality is not related to calf value,” French stressed.
“We all know in 2019 calf values were significantly lower than previous years, and we didn't see a spike in calf mortality.”
French said data also showed that mortality was not higher in bull calves compared to heifer calves.
To dispell a belief that bull calves were not as well looked after he pointed to research carried out in 2017 which showed both bull and heifer calves received sufficient colostrum. Blood samples taken from week old calves on Irish dairy farms showed bulls had an IGG concentration of 29mg/l and heifers 30mg/l, with 12mg/l being the acceptable mark.
Trust
French did see scope to increase space on farms to rear calves in 2020, but said the most important thing for dairy farmers to do next spring is to rebuild trust and relationships with beef farmers.
“We need to supply them [beef farmers] with healthy calves with known genetics, transparent genetics, so they know what they're getting. We don't want to sell them something that is different to what they think they're buying. That is fundamental to our sustainability.”
Additional reporting by Aidan Brennan
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