The Calf Milk Replacer Guide provides a wealth of information about milk replacer ingredients, product tags, mixing and feeding, formulation & feeding rate, cold weather strategies as well as tips for raising a healthy calf. The Guide is a solid… Continue Reading
The most popular post at Calf Sessions has now been made into a movie. Back in June, 2013 when I originally posted The Science of Mixing Milk Replacer – Mixology 101, I never expected it to generate the interest it… Continue Reading
Acidified milk replacer has been around a long time. The addition of organic acids helps control bacterial growth, making it appropriate for feeding systems where reconstituted milk replacer is left in the feeder for many hours or even days. The… Continue Reading
An interesting paper on health factors and automated feeders for calves was published in the July, 2017 Journal of Dairy Science. See the reference at the end of this post. Researchers evaluated calf health measures on 38 farms in MN, WI and… Continue Reading
Organic calf milk replacer has been a rather scarce commodity in the United States. Milk Specialties Global aims at changing that relationship with the introduction of Organi-calf ™, their new USDA organic calf milk replacer. For many organic dairies, this… Continue Reading
Previous posts at Calf Sessions have presented ideas on ramping up your calf feeding program during winter cold stress1. I recently combined those feed management ideas with basic environmental management in a movie format: Winterize Your Calf Feeding Program. The… Continue Reading
When we think of automatic feeding systems for milk replacer, we probably envision groups of calves where each calf walks to a stall or feeding station to receive programmed allotments of milk replacer throughout the day. An automatic feeder can… Continue Reading
Animal plasma is a unique protein source that provides functional proteins. These functional proteins contain biologically active albumin and globulin proteins. They also contain immunoglobulins such as IgG which are important antibodies that circulate in plasma. It is a highly… Continue Reading
~ updated on August 15, 2017. Milk replacer characteristics can influence how it interacts with automatic calf feeders. These interactions affect how the milk replacer behaves in the feeder and may also affect calf performance. This post explores how the… Continue Reading
~ updated August 14, 2017. As environmental temperatures decrease, a calf’s need for energy increases. Calves need between 1.0 and 1.3% more energy for each degree the environmental temperature drops below 50° F. Below this temperature, calves must increase heat… Continue Reading