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Suckled Calf Production
Suckler herds are a challenge to manage because reproduction, lactation and growth all contribute to the output of the enterprise. Typical physical performance data and feed requirements are summarised in the table.
Fertility
Improving returns from a suckler herd depends on increasing the number of calves weaned from the cows or heifers mated. Herd fertility is driven by health, nutrition and good management.
Optimising Cow Fertility
Depends on careful management of body condition score throughout the year. Good feeding management reduces calving difficulties and days between calving and conception. Manage cow body condition through the annual cycle for a healthy and productive herd.
Condition Scoring
Whether spring or autumn calving changes in body condition should be avoided during the last six weeks of calving. Aim to increase body condition score from calving to six weeks after conception to encourage oestrus activity and avoid early embryo loss.
In an average 600kg suckler cow, 1 body condition score equates to about 70kg bodyweight. Grouping cows/heifers by age and/ or body condition score also helps to achieve target condition pre-calving by allowing different feeding regimes to be used.
Service Period
Managing heifers to get them big enough to bull at 15 months without being overfat requires steady growth of about 0.8kg/day from birth to service. This will help to ensure a target at around 15 months of age of 65% of the mature cow weight. This gain should continue until early into the last three months of pregnancy when the heifer at 21 months of age should be 85% of mature cow weight.
For good conception rates ensure access to the appropriate quality and quantity of feed to hold or increase bodyweight until the next service at 27 months of age. Heifers should ideally be managed as a separate group to allow accurate concentrate feed allocation and to avoid competition with mature cows.
Minerals are essential in the precalving period with specific requirements depending on the diet being fed. In particular, cow health and calf vitality require high levels of magnesium, selenium, vitamin E and iodine.
Calving to Conception
The 80 day period from calving to conception is crucial to maintaining an annual calving pattern.
Adequate intake of quality colostrum is vital to give the calf immunity to certain diseases. The calf’s ability to absorb immunogolobulins in colostrum reduces from about six hours after birth and is gone in two days.
The Suckled Calf
Creep feeding can be introduced at any time after calving but should occur for at least three weeks before weaning to reduce stress and minimise drop in performance at weaning. By the time a calf is 4 months old half of its nutrient requirement should be met by grass, silage or creep feed, rather than milk. At this stage a calf will convert feed to bodyweight more efficiently than at any other time in its life. Regardless of production system maximising 200 day weight will be cost effective.
Weaning the Suckled Calf
When to wean should be based on feed supply and cow condition. Once the calf is 6.5 months old (200 days) 75% of its nutrient requirement should be from feeds other than milk. If suckled calves are causing excess loss of body condition from the cow, they should be weaned immediately.
Dry Cows
Fifty days before calving body condition must be stabilised. If cow body condition has not been well managed by 150 days before calving, it must be regained quickly to avoid changes in the last 50 days of pregnancy.
Lean cows 150 days pre-calving required to gain a full body condition score will need to gain 0.7kg/day for the first 100 days. This will require good grass silage ad lib plus 1-2kg per head per day of concentrates until body condition is recovered.
The ideal body condition score for a spring calving cow at calving is 2.5. For an autumn calving cow the ideal body condition score at calving is 3.0. It is important not to allow cows to become over fat before calving.
Liveweight (kg)
|
Calf (11 months) |
350 |
|
Daily LWG (kg) |
0.95 |
|
Calves reared per 100 cows mated |
88 |
Feed (kg)
|
Concentrate cow |
180 |
|
Concentrate calf |
175 |
|
Grass silage (25% DM) |
6500 |
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