Are you set up to achieve the best growth possible for your calves this summer?

Everyone always talks about how ryegrass hates the heat; therefore, the quality of the grass is not as good over the summer, therefore you need options to help your cows keep making milk. For example: Adding some highly palatable high energy and high protein feed to balance the pasture, plant a highly palatable delicious summer herb crop, or even offer a beautiful smorgasbord of maize silage, chopped grass silage and a variety of concentrates on the feed pad for our cows to enjoy – if they are lucky this would occur in the shade due to a covered barn!

If you have calves off grazing, I am sure you don’t even think about their summer diet, as you have paid top dollar and sent them to a ‘summer safe’ and facial eczema free region of the country (Yeah, right?!).

But if the calves are home on the milking platform, all that diet management you are doing for the cows to make more milk, you should be doing for the calves to achieve target growth rates.

Weight gain from now until 1st May is crucial for setting these animals up for a long productive life in your herd; compromising growth now will lead to poorly grown heifers that don’t produce and don’t get in-calf early. Targets at 1^st May (pre-winter) are not negotiable.

Everyone knows that grazing calves to achieve those average target growth rates of 0.65-0.75kg/day (depending on their mature liveweight) is hard work.

To achieve these growth rates calves need to be offered 3.5-4% of body weight in dry matter of a diet with a min of 18% crude protein, 11.5ME/kgDM, adequate fibre to support rumen function and not too much starch/sugar (i.e. not loads of maize or grain).

Ensuring that they are offered the best grass on farm and, most likely, combined with high quality supplements to balance the grass every day over summer is crucial on top of the other requirements like fresh clean water (calves are fussy), trace elements, animal health prevention.

But how do you achieve this?

• Graze calves on their own block
• Graze calves ½ way around the round
• Stock 2-3 calves to a paddock (need good fencing for this of course as 5-6 calves to a paddock doesn’t work)
• Feed calves on a summer crop such as chicory or plantain (on it 24/7 or on/off grazed)

One of the best ways of ensuring your system is working (as all of the above can work) is regular weighing – ideally, over a high-risk time like summer weighing should be done monthly as the poor doers can really drop behind quickly when there is a significant feed pinch. Each of the above management options have pros and cons.

If you are adding in concentrates as a supplement option, ensure you have access for all calves to eat at the same time, otherwise you may end up with gut issues if the feed is not rumen friendly, or just uneven intakes (fat calves get fatter)! Another useful tip is that baled grass silage may not be high enough quality for the calves i.e. the fibre levels are too high and the ME is too low and therefore the calves will have full rumens and big bellies but are not achieving target weights as the feed is taking too long to digest. Fine chopped silage from the stack is much more palatable for the calves and easier for the calves to digest, meaning they can eat more in total and actually gain weight.

Be aware if you start supplementing feed that mineral requirements may change. One example is that calcium and phosphorus need to be in the right ratio i.e. 2:1 in the diet, and if calves are on a lot of PKE, phosphorus levels are very high. PKE should not be fed at more than 2kg per calf per day.

Having the calves at home over summer requires a good summer budget i.e. if you have 100 calves at home, that’s roughly 100tDM more feed you need from 1^st Nov until 1^st May. We won’t discuss quantities of crop in this article as crops will have been planted already.

If the calves are on the milking platform ensure you have a discussion with the whole farm team so everyone knows who is responsible for the calves and how they can be best managed. This includes making sure that calves are counted every day and calves that are not eating are seen to immediately.

For more information regarding growing your youngstock talk to your vet. They can put together a detailed animal health plan to help ensure your future herd gets the best possible start.