CALVES & HEIFERS

“The dairy producer plays a critical role in veal production,” said Dr. Jessica Pempek, animal welfare specialist and assistant professor at Ohio State University.

Day in and day out, dairy farmers provide the best in animal husbandry. There are occasions when animals get sick and need antimicrobial therapy to overcome a specific disease challenge.

Over the last 10 years, the dairy industry has shown an increased interest in early life feeding programs for calves, spurred in part by several studies and meta-analyses illustrating the potential effect of greater pre-weaning average daily gain on future milk production.

As a major energy source, fat is an important element to consider in a calf milk replacer. Fat, however, has other nutritional effects beyond being a source of energy. Butterfat offers a unique fatty acid, namely butyric acid.

A newborn calf is the most vulnerable animal on a dairy. Born with an immature immune system, the calf can’t effectively handle pathogen challenges in the environment until 3 to 4 weeks old. In the meantime, young calves are bombarded with a host of stressors and disease-causing pathogens.

Extensive calf rumen development studies were done in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s at Iowa State University, Cornell University and the U.K. National Institute for Research in Dairying.