AUSTRALIAN dairyfarmers are losing thousands of dollars a year through ignorance and poor calf management practices.
That’s according to Jeanette Fisher, former President of the Professional Calf Rearers’ Association of Australia and principal of on-farm consulting business Heifermax.
Jeanette Fisher is one of Australia’s foremost authorities on dairy calf and heifer management.
Mrs Fisher said the first eight weeks’ of a dairy calf’s life were critical to the total performance of a dairy farm and if not managed correctly would have drastic consequences on farm profitability.
“Calf management practices are critical to not only attrition rates of heifers between birth and second lactation, but also to the animals’ lifetime feed conversion efficiency and milk production.
“Poor calf management in Australia is resulting in some farms having attrition rates as high as 48% of heifers prior to their second lactation, which is basically half the farm’s replacement herd.
“Poor calf management practices are also turning out heifers, often with poor health and growth rates, which when they enter the herd, are producing as much as 1000 litres less milk per lactation that their high performing cousins.
“From my research, each dead calf equates to the equivalent of $30,000 in lost productivity, through reduced feed conversion efficiency and lost milk production and unforeseen veterinary and pharmaceutical costs. This is a huge cost and one that dairyfarmers can do something about, simply by changing their early feeding and calf weaning regimes.”
Mrs Fisher said research showed that improved calf management practices can deliver 4-8 times more milk production than genetic selection.
Mrs Fisher said she believed less than 10% of Australia’s dairy farms were employing best practice calf management and not because of neglect, but because of ignorance of what best practice involves and a lack of benchmarks on ‘good’ heifer management results in Australia.
Mrs Fisher plans to undertake an assessment of current calf rearing practices and develop a self-assessment tool that can be used on farm to help producers gauge and improve their heifer management.
She then plans to collect production data from farmers who have made heifer management changes, to monitor and quantify the improvements.
