The lull before the storm: Getting ready for calving

By Steve Forsman, Business Development Manager, CRV AmBreed

The dry period is a dairy farmer’s holiday? Yeah right! It’s time to get ready for calving!

Your herd and animal health records should be a valuable resource in terms of telling you what to expect in the coming weeks. As you go, or as soon as you can, input all the information you can about health treatments, matings, pregnancy tests, previous calving assists and any other issues into your herd recording software. The more information you put into the system, the more valuable it will be as a tool, telling you what calvings to expect when and highlighting cows to watch, such as those frequently birthing twins or requiring assistance during or following calving. CRV AmBreed’s MISTRO programme provides you with a huge array of reporting options to help you and your staff manage calving and a mobile version, MISTRO Pocket, is also available for your Palm or HP iPAQ device.

As you prepare for the coming season, take a rainy day to have a look at how the current season has gone for you. Production, management, animal health and reproductive results will all have a serious impact on your bottom line regardless of payout. What improvements can you make? Who can help you – take a look at your networks and recruit them into your team as advisors. Set some goals for achieving great things in the 2009/10 season. If you are coming to the New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery Creek this month, pop in to our site, F29, F30 and talk to us about your goals – it’s our 40th birthday this year so there will be plenty of fun to be had, amongst the work talk. We’ll have a virtual bull parade and seminars and resources that will help you get even more cows in calf – check our website for details of times and topics.

When you get home, updating your records and familiarising yourself with some of the features of your recording software can highlight areas in which you can easily make profitable improvements. The Fertility Focus report is a good place to start, and before calving is the ideal time to give yourself a pat on the back for the areas in which your whole-herd fertility programme is working and to select areas to improve on for the coming year. Are your cows a bit light? Perhaps it’s time to start body condition scoring on a regular basis. Is your submission rate lower than you’d like? Improvement could be as simple as recording pre-mating heats or improving heat detection on your farm with Estrotects or other heat detection aids.

During the dry period, calf barns. colostrum vats and rearing equipment should be prepared well before you need them – all too often a bout of wet and windy weather will speed things up a bit! Identify the best person to rear calves; they need to be patient and gentle with your valuable replacement heifers and have the skills to identify problems and illnesses early. Your calf housing needs to be secure, warm, dry and well-ventilated. Have a look around the pens for potential hazards such as loose tin or cladding, holes and nails or other items that could injure calves as well as hazards that could injure or impede calf rearers. Calving is a busy time of year and staff are often tired and stressed; making the working environment safe and pleasant can go a long way towards keeping them happy and healthy. Line calf pens with non-edible bedding such as untreated shavings or sawdust and keep some bedding in reserve in case of saturation.

There’s hard work ahead, but it’s exciting too; your best replacement heifer calves so far are right around the corner!

Published in Dairyman; June 2009