Maximising potential

Rita and Mark had tried just about every feeding system available in an effort to maximise the performance of their pure bred Guernsey herd. However, it wasn't until last year that they discovered one capable of achieving all their objectives, namely once-daily calf feeding, rapid growth rates, easier management, reduced labour involvement, earlier bulling of heifers and lower age at calving, allied to cost reductions and increased output.

"Our previous efforts at rearing calves were satisfactory, but the results weren't as good as we'd have liked and feeding twice a day required a great deal of time and effort," said Rita, whose 170-acre Woolcombe Farm at Cornworthy has been in her family for 75 years. "The biggest problem was getting enough food into the calves. The richness of milk from our own herd meant we had to limit the volume fed to avoid scouring. That checked the calves' growth, so we tried a variety of milk replacers, but none was easy to use or offered the results we were after."

What sounded impossible became a reality following advice from Mole Valley Farmers' agribusiness development manager Jem Marshall, who persuaded the Dunns to change to Once-a-Day milk powder...

Manufactured using skim from British milk, Once-a-Day is a product available in two formulations, Once-a-Day Water or Once-a-Day Milk. The latter is the first designed for mixing with cow's milk and by substantially improving the milk's nutritional value allows calves to be fed once daily and gives the opportunity to use evening milk, reducing average milk butterfat in an over-quota situation.

In a series of trials, calves fed Once-a-Day containing 23% oil and 24% protein achieved 32% greater weight gain, were healthier, more content and grew faster to eight weeks of age than those on traditional twice-daily feeding. It also resulted in dryer bedding, greatly reduced incidence of nutritional scours and much lower expenditure on scour remedies, while calves consumed 5% more dry feed, promoting rumen development and helping them to digest the high levels of grass and silage required to maximise development.

Despite being almost forgotten on many farms, colostrum holds the key to healthy, high performing animals, getting them off to a flying start. Rita and Mark Dunn are amongst those who understand its true value. Calves coming off the cows are immediately moved to rearing pens, where for the first four days they receive as much colostrum as possible.

Rita Dunn said: "We knew our calves and heifers were under-performing: it was a bit like running a Formula 1 car on two-star petrol. The animals were never able to develop their full genetic potential, which was at odds with our aim to increase the herd average from 6000 to 6500 litres and reduce calving age. Using products from different companies often means a nutritionally incomplete diet, so when Jem Marshall suggested we change to the MVF feeding system it made sense. Given the results, any extra cost is insignificant."

Because the Dunns have a hard culling policy designed to maintain productivity and minimise problems, a steady stream of heifers is needed to replace those that are regularly selected out from the herd. Under the previous feeding system every batch of six heifers produced a couple of star performers, the others being only satisfactory in terms of growth and development. The objective now is to increase uniformity, ensure that more animals achieve their potential and reduce the age at first calving from 36 months to 30 months.

The result of saving six months rearing costs and the additional income from animals coming into the milking herd that much earlier, quite apart from the cash flow benefits.