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As cows begin to spring up a few days prior to calving they are moved to an open yard with a large open straw bedded shed. This shed is capable of holding about 80 cows.
“At peak of calving, we will have 20 or 30 cows calving per day so we need capacity,” Joe said. Cows are picked out from the cubicles and put into this shed every day, meaning he mostly only has to watch the cows in the straw shed and not worry about cows in the cubicle shed.
Cows calve on the straw area but if a cow needs to be handled or is having difficulty there is a pen in the corner of the shed with a calving gate. Calves are snatched from the cow, tagged and fed with colostrum soon after calving and put into a separate pen in the shed. They are moved to the calf shed in the morning or during the day.
The night calving shift starts at 2am. Whoever is on during the night finishes up at lunchtime the following day. “This means there are three of us around in the morning when the bulk of the work is to be done,” Joe said.
Heating the colostrum
Joe has a novel way of heating colostrum. Rather than using seven or eight litres of hot water to warm up the colostrum, Joe adapted an old hot water cylinder to warm up colostrum.
A steel basin is secured on top of the hot water tank which is connected to the coil going through the cylinder. A tap is placed on the bottom of the cylinder which regulates the speed of the colostrum through the tank, so this also regulates how hot the milk is.
The water in the tank is heated on night rate electricity which is cheaper.
Once a day feeding
As cows are only milked once a day in early spring, no warm milk is available for feeding calves in the evening.
Rather than going down the road of heating milk for feeding to calves, which would require extra equipment and cost not to mention extra time, the Leonards feed calves once a day from an early age.
“We start calves off on once a day feeding with 4.5 litres of milk per day and then build this up to six or seven litres over time,” Joe explained.
Initially, calves are grouped in batches of ten but are then moved to groups of 45 which have access to fields and an open straw bedded shed. These calves are fed with a mobile calf feeder. Meal, water and hay is always available.
Digital scales reader
The Leonards milk the herd through a basic 40-unit herringbone. Milk for calves is diverted to a separate bulk tank via a dump line. This bulk tank is sitting on weigh cells and there are digital readers both in the milking parlour and on the bulk tank. Depending on the number of calves to be fed the milker can let in the precise amount of milk into the tank, avoiding any wastage.
There is a small submersible pump in the milk tank and this is used to pump milk to the calf shed and to fill the mobile calf feeder. Again, the precise amount of milk can be pumped by using the digital scales. Being able to pump the milk speeds up calf feeding and avoids having to carry buckets or trolleys of milk around the yard.
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