Current Status of Heifer Raising in Ontario

Table of Contents

1. Raising Costs
2. Estimated Heifer Raising Costs
3. Factors Increasing Age at First Calving
4. Calving Ease Sires
5. Labour Costs of Heifer Raising
6. Custom Heifer Raising
7. Heifer Pastures
8. Heifer Housing
   

The raising of dairy replacements represents the second largest operating expense (feed is first) in the operation of an Ontario dairy farm. Despite this, there is very little field data on any aspect of dairy heifer production. Milk recording programs tend to capture animals at calving, and financial record programs such as OFMAP seldom include heifers as a separate enterprise. The only reliable statistic we have is the following, taken from DHI records (milk recorded herds only.)

According to this data the median age at first calving is 26.8 months. Since the average age at first calving in 1993 was 28.9 months, there is a trend to younger calving, but the range in the table suggests that much more can be achieved. Based on the table, 10% of herds calve heifers at 24.6 months. With raising costs estimated to be over $2 per day the economic advantage for this difference from the median age, of 2.2 months is more than $130 per heifer raised, or $7500 for an average dairy farm raising 55 to 60 replacements per year.

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Raising Costs

Typical costs of raising replacements to calve at 24 months are estimated to be $940 feed only, $1234 excluding labor, and $1734 with labour included.

Individual herds and research trials applying excellent management are routinely demonstrating that calving at 22 months is an achievable goal. Published growth standards for dairy heifers and recommendations to calve at 24 months of age have not changed in nearly 25 years. Reducing the age at calving to 22 months in well grown heifers appears practical and would reduce raising costs a further $120. per head. It is time to reassess the current recommendations and encourage calving at 22 months.

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Budgeting Assumptions: Weaning at 4 weeks of age: Birth weight is 45 Kg; Utilities include telephone, hydro, fuel; Calving at 24 months; Calving weight is 575 Kg.

$1234 total cost is $1.69/day plus $500 labour is $2.37/day.

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Factors Increasing Age at First Calving

My strictly subjective, based on field observations, assessment of why heifers do not calve at 24 months, is that they simply are not bred at 15 months. In the majority of cases this is an intentional choice of herd management. The main reason for this is a desire to have more mature looking animals in the milking line, and to present bigger and more mature animals for classification. Many of our clients are very strongly motivated by conformation considerations. The following is a summary of 356,000 Holstein first classifications by age, and indicates younger animals tend to score 1.5 points lower.

Unless heifers presented to the classifier older are actually superior genetically, the system should be redesigned to eliminate this bias. Reclassification may influence the final outcome, but most animals are never reclassified. Given good management, there is no indication that lifetime production, longevity or expression of type characteristics is harmed by earlier calving.

The second most common reason heifers are not bred is that heifers eligible for breeding are not identified. Most herds have no electronic data base of heifers, and there is no system to generate a list of "virgin heifers over 12 months". Furthermore many farms are not sensitive to the appropriate size for breeding and have no "benchmark" to determine if the appropriate whither height of 52 inches has been reached. A record keeping system, which generates a monthly list of service aged heifers, and a "mark on the post" "measured manger headrail height" or other simple means to approximate the whither height of heifers would be an asset.

The third common reason for delayed first calving is that many heifer management systems make heat detection and artificial insemination of heifers inconvenient. Inconvenient activities are the first to be neglected when more pressing tasks interfere. In a pasture study in East central Ontario in 1990, 54 of 298 herds that pastured heifers bred no heifers during the pasture season. In many herds heat detection in the heifer barn is a chance event since farmers and employees spend very little time there. Good handling facilities, combined with either heat detection aids such as KaMaRs, or better yet a programmed breeding approach, can address what appear to be primarily labour and management issues.

Perhaps fourth on the list of reasons for delayed first calving is inadequate size at breeding age. When the goal is calving at 24 months, I suggest that it is most important on most farms to change attitudes, facilities, and management approaches and less important to change nutritional or health status of the heifers. When the goal is reducing age at calving from 24 to 22 months, nutrition and health become of greater importance since the right attitude is clearly already in place.

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Calving Ease Sires

One area where progress has been made is in the understanding of the sire’s contribution to calving ease. A decade ago, every A.I. stud had one, usually unworthy, sire, breeding the majority of heifers on the sire analyst’s assurance of significantly better calving ease. Today proofs published as "% unassisted", illustrate that differences are small. While producers avoid breeding heifers to bulls with the lowest ratings, there is no longer undue selection emphasis on this trait. Among the top 10 usage sires at Gencor, those rated easiest calving rank 9th and 10th in semen sales while the most difficult rank 4th, 6th and 8th. Since there is a negative correlation between calving ease as a maternal and calf trait, (calves with narrow hips and shoulders become cows with narrow hips and shoulders) strong selection for it is ill advised. Sires with good calving ease ratings tend toward shorter gestation length, which may be a worthwhile goal to pursue.

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Labour Costs of Heifer Raising

The value of farm labour is always difficult to quantify. As farms get bigger, involving more paid labour there will be a stronger recognition among dairy producers that "time" is indeed "money". At $20 per hour "5 minutes per day" becomes 30.4 hours per year or $608. At this rate heifer raising must be done with minimal labour to be efficient. As pointed out in the raising costs above, an estimated 25 hours of labour is invested in each heifer on a dairy farm. Ways that heifer raising labour can be reduced include less frequent feeding. Except in hot weather when spoilage is a concern feeding every other day may be appropriate. Facilities that permit drive through feeding and easy feed push up reduce labour and are an essential feature of in new facilities. Mechanical manure handling may also reduce labour but has a poorer payback than with milking cows since less frequent scraping is required. Cold barns, tractor scraped so that frozen manure is of little concern, may be the most economical heifer housing option. One area where labour is often wasted is in catching and handling animals for treatment and breeding. A good handling facility for sorting and restraining heifers is a must. Self locking head gates are one such system, but preliminary research evidence suggest reduced feed intake results from their use. A catch lane and working chute accessible to several groups of heifers may be most appropriate.

One of the most labour intensive aspects of raising replacements is feeding milk or milk replacer to young calves. If a typical Ontario farm spends 10 minutes twice daily feeding calves this represents a labour cost of $2400 per year. Mob feeders are a low cost self feeding system which can significantly reduce this labour cost, and also incorporates lower cost group housing. Experience with these systems in Ontario is very limited. Adapting mob feeding to small groups of calves born over a period of a week or more may be difficult. Robotic calf feeders which mix and deliver measured amounts of milk replacer to group housed animals are virtually labour free. The estimated cost of $12,000 to $15,000 for these systems may be justifiable where labour costs are high.

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Custom Heifer Raising

As in most endeavors, there are economies of scale and other benefits in separating the business of raising replacements from the milk production function. In Ontario custom raisers are usually semi retired former dairy producers, who want to take in heifers from 6 months to calving to make use of existing facilities. Larger business ventures set up for custom raising are popular with larger US herds. Recently Agway has started a custom raising program that takes in heifer calves at birth and focuses on promoting rapid growth and early calving. More detailed discussion of custom raising benefits and pitfalls is available in the OMAFRA factsheets, "Custom Raising Dairy Heifers", order number 98-059 and "Guide to Developing a Custom Dairy Heifer Raising Agreement", order number 98-019.

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Heifer Pastures

I would like to identify one other area of opportunity in heifer raising where there is clearly room to improve economic returns. According to a 1990 survey of dairy herds in East Central area, 70% of herds pastured their heifers for part of the growing period. While use of pasture may be less in other regions, many farms have creek flats or other untillable areas that will be pastured by heifers whether or not it is profitable to do so.

Based on the study:

• average stocking rate 0.94 head/acre
• 80% practiced continuous grazing with no rotation
• no supplementary feed was provided to pastured heifers in mid season on 46% of farms and in late season on 23%
• 34% of pastured heifers drank creek water, 32% drank from tanks, and 23% from ponds.
• Less than 50% of heifers were wormed and less than 50% were fly tagged.
• Very few farmers clipped, fertilized, harrowed or sprayed these pasture areas.

While there are many good reasons not to devote high value land in Southwestern Ontario to pasture, creek flats will probably always fall to this use. Based on the above data, however, it should be relatively simple to increase both growth of heifers and pasture productivity in most heifer pasture situations.

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Heifer Housing

Dairy farmers considering improvements in heifer housing should be aware of the strong trend toward freestall housing for the milking herd. Since milking cows require more feed, produce more manure, utilize more labour, and respond with greater productivity to greater cow comfort, anyone in older inefficient tie stall facilities should be encouraged to consider building for milking cows and looking at temporary renovation of the old facilities for heifers. Unfortunately there are few good examples of tiestall barn renovations for dairy heifers. Stone walls, and low ceiling height make good ventilation difficult and efficient use of equipment like trailer mixers impossible. Old bank barns are best suited for low density uses such as a few young calves, and maternity and treatment pens. Even for these uses, recognize that a new building shell costs less than $10 per square foot. Renovations are usually more expensive than interior detail in new buildings so the net savings from renovation are often less than $7 or $8 per square foot.

The best way to use old bank barns for heifers may be to simply gut the inside, apply a liberal pack of straw and construct a fenceline feeding system in a concrete yard outside. When dairy producers insist on building for heifers, a full farmstead plan that considers future locations of other buildings, and design features that align with emerging technology should be a requirement. For example, no heifer barn should be built today that does not permit drive through feeding with a trailer mixer.

Plans for heifer housing systems including details of space allocation, freestall sizes, and manger curb heights are available from the author. The following are additional suggested guidelines for calf and heifer housing.

-milk fed calves should be housed individually to avoid calf to calf contact. Hutches are an excellent choice but require ventilation in summer (especially polydomes) to prevent heat build up. Relocating hutches to shady sites in summer will improve growth rates.

Greenhouse calf barns also work well and may be cheaper and offer more operator comfort. Do shade them in summer, and ventilate them well. Guidelines for design are included elsewhere. These barns can work for preweaned calves in individual pens and for older heifers in group housing, but usually not in the same building.

Transition housing post weaning should include super hutches or pens for groups of 3 to 6 weaned calves to allow gradual adjustment to group housing.

For younger heifers, freestall sizes are very specific to the age of the calves. Improper stall sizes teach bad habits, so especially for smaller herds, it is advantageous to use bedded packs for heifers up to 6 months or 1 year. Beyond one year of age, freestall size changes more slowly. Freestalls for these older heifers reduce bedding use, and provide training in freestall use before calving. In larger herd, switching to freestalls at a younger age will reduce bedding use. A gradual transition, which includes a small, completely bedded group pen, followed by a larger "split pack" and then the first pen with freestalls, will train calves to the notion of separate eating and resting areas, and result in fewer freestall refusals and cleaner calves.

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