Watch: shed v shelter – contrasting calf housing options

While calf housing may have become squeezed on many farms over the past few years, the winter just gone has focused a lot of farmers as to where investment is needed on their farm.

However, investment in adequate calf facilities does not always have to cost substantial sums as is seen on the farm of Michael McGrane and his two sons, Conor and Mark. The three men farm at Walterstown, Navan, Co Meath, with Donal Finnegan who also works full-time on the farm.

They are currently milking 400 cows, with Michael starting the farm in 1974. It is fair to say that there have been big changes on the farm in the past 40 years. They currently own 450 acres with a further 550 acres rented, split into three main blocks. The majority of the land is in grass with 80 acres dedicated to maize production. The herd has expanded steadily over the past eight years moving from 250 to 400 cows, split between autumn and spring calving. The main milking block around the yard consists of 330 acres.

Disease prevention

Disease prevention is one of the main priorities for Conor with calves getting an RSV and IBR intranasal vaccination at 20 days of age as he believes it is at this stage that calves have to start fighting for themselves.

“Only two batches of calves will go into each shed – a batch in the autumn and another batch in the spring. This is to prevent a buildup of disease,” according to Conor.

It is easy to see that Conor has a real passion for calf rearing, evident from a 0% mortality rate from pneumonia or scour this spring.

“Out of 250 spring calves we only lost three. One was due to joint ill, one was from a buildup of fluid on the lungs and the other was due to a blocked gut. He lived for about a week and then died.

“I do love calf rearing. At the end of the day, it all comes down to hygiene.”

While all calf sheds on the farm have been power-washed extensively, the intention now is to spray them with Kenocox,which is a broad-spectrum disinfectant that is effective against endoparasites, such as cryptosporidium and coccidiosis.

“The shed might look clean, but there are millions of bacteria still in the concrete,” according to Conor.

Move to spring

In recent years, the McGranes made the decision to move from a typically 50:50 split-calving herd to 250 cows calving in the spring with the remaining 150 cows calving in the back end of the year. This shift led to increased pressure on calf-housing facilities in the spring so investment had to be made.

With all cattle brought through to beef on the farm there is extra incentive to ensure calves thrive from a young age.

“We finish all the cattle on the farm for beef too. I like the beef [enterprise] and we have done the figures. It justifies having it as an enterprise on the farm. Beef cattle are also suited to the outside blocks away from the main yard,” according to Conor.

The new shed has housed calves for two winters and has worked very well so far, according to Conor. The shed itself is approximately 24m long, split into five bays. Each pen measures 11m from the back wall out to the front barrier. The pens have been designed to allow calves to be easily locked back to allow cleaning out of the front section along the feed face. The front feeding area is 3.6m deep. Each pen is designed to hold 16 calves with the total capacity of the shed 80 calves.

When Conor is cleaning out the back section of the pens, he sets up a small pen with hurdles outside of the front barriers to temporarily hold calves.

“I liked the walls for the shelter, calves hate draughts. It is also a good barrier to prevent disease spreading easily between pens,” Conor said. A woodchip base is used in all of the farms’ calf houses with straw bedding over this. This ensures that waste can seep away quickly.

A small 4ft-wide loft is in place above the calf pens. This allows for straw to be stored close to the pens. At the front of the pens is a windbreaker that can be raised or lowered, depending on the conditions.

Conor does not believe that enough air moves through vented sheeting so, instead, spaced sheeting has been fitted to the side and roof of the shed.

The total cost of the shed came to €33,000 including VAT. However, the sheeting for the back wall was reused from another shed and some of the groundwork was completed by the McGranes, saving on the overall cost. Conaty Steel Ltd completed the project.

“Last year, we were bombarded with calves as we moved more cows from autumn to spring calving. And we said we were not building another shed so we had to look at other alternatives.

“We made homemade shelters on the silage pit with galvanised sheeting and they worked well, with no health issues. So this year, we said we would try something more permanent that would be easy to put up or take down,” Conor said.

“These type of pens might not work all year round. The weather really needs to be right. I will use them for the first batch of calves in the autumn and the last batch that calves in the spring. I probably wouldn’t put calves into them before 01 April,” Conor explained.

The pens are designed to take six calves each. With 10 pens, this gives a total capacity of 60 calves, with Conor hoping to rear over 100 calves a year in them.

Pens are approximately 3.7m wide and 3.9m deep. The galvanised sheet covers slightly under half of the pen. This sheet itself is 1.8m long – 1.2m high gates are used for the pens. The front gate was specifically designed to hold water buckets on the right, a meal feeder in the middle and a hay rack on the left. There is also space to hang a teat feeder for the calves. The gate partly dividing each pen is fitted with stockboard to provide shelter for calves.

“When I got Condon Engineering out, I told them that I didn’t want anything bolted. I didn’t want to have to take a wrench out to put them up or take them down. I also wanted them hanging on chains so that I could adjust them easily if I wanted,” said Conor.

Interest

“There has been a lot of interest in them from discussion groups and other farmers as a cost-effective way of providing additional housing. Everyone already has a silage pit and it has purpose-built effluent collection channels already in place too.

“The only thing that we might do differently next year is to put stockboard between a few of the pens just to give a bit more shelter,” Conor said.

The total cost of the 10 pens came to €6,700 excluding the VAT, giving a cost of €670 each.

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