Weighing and EID system sees Canterbury farmers through tough calving season

A Canterbury dairy farming couple have had their best calving season yet, despite atrocious weather, unexpected hospital admissions and no additional staff because of Covid restrictions. Ben and Allie King are variable order sharemilkers on a 240 effective hectare dairy farm and 130-hectare support block in Staveley near Ashburton. They put their calving success down to a regimented plan that has seen them through one of the toughest seasons in their business.

“We’ve had floods, wind, broken irrigators, snow, broken tractors and we haven’t been able to get any additional staff to help during calving because of Covid restrictions,” explains Ben on our new Power to Farm Podcast. They also had the added stress of Allie, who is pregnant, ending up in hospital needing her appendix out and coming down with campylobacter, which thankfully was unrelated to the farm. “It’s honestly been the toughest season of my life,” says Ben. “But as far as the farm has been running, it’s our best year yet. We calved 271 replacement heifer calves and we still have 271 out in the paddock now.”

The couple milk 850 Jersey cross cows, which produce and average of 511kgMS/cow. Ben says their regimented plan during calving means they not only cut their mortality rate to zero, but they are also setting the animals up for life. Ben picks calves up from the paddock two to three times a day for the duration of calving and has a goal to tube feed them with two liters of warm colostrum within their first eight hours of life, delivering protective antibodies to the newborns as soon as possible. The calves are fed 2.2 liters of warmed milk, twice a day, with the warmed milk key to getting the calves trained to suckle on teats, says Allie. All calves, including the farm’s beef and bobby calves, get the same treatment.

A key pillar of the system is weighing the calves and for that they use a Gallagher weighing set-up and EID wand. They weigh the calves every three weeks from when they are born until they reach 110kgs. “It’s about tracking their performance,” says Ben. “By measuring their weight gain we can get an accurate picture of how they’re doing in general. A lot of farmers probably underutilise weighing, but it can tell you immediately if they’re thriving or if there’s something that’s hindering them.”

Most of the heifer calves are housed in a 10-bay purpose-built calf shed and they also have six other bays that are converted into calf sheds during calving. They also have separate sheds for beef calves, and they stick to mobs of 15 per pen to reduce disease and enable them to manage each calf more closely. “We found by weighing regularly we can move mobs around in terms of their size, so smaller calves aren’t battling against bigger calves. If there are any mobs that we are worried about we will weigh them every two weeks and we can tweak their feeding or get the vets in if we need to,” says Allie.

Once the calves reach 110kgs they move to weighing them every five weeks. “We’re pretty proactive and managing them in this way tells us immediately if something is off. We definitely believe that if we look after our animals they will look after us,” says Allie. In the calf sheds they use disinfectant to dip their boots in before entering each pen, to avoid cross contamination of any bugs, and they use Opti-Guard to prevent scours.

Once the calves reach 14 days old, they let them out into a paddock in front of their pens to forage and run around. “I am a believer that as long as the weather is kind, the calves should be out and foraging for grass, and meal and other sources of feed,’ says Ben. “We’re lucky with our set up that we can do that, and they can still come back to the pens for shelter.”

The couple doesn’t have a set time for weaning. Instead, they base it on the breed type, health of the animal and its weight. Ben says if the calves are really thriving on grass and meal and not interested in milk then they will wean them. “We’re not perfect and the system is continuing to evolve, but it's incredibly rewarding to look out the window, see them running around and know that in some way we've helped them along their way. It's been a dream calving in one way and a nightmare in many others.”

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