On Tuesday 18th June NFU member Metcalfe Farms hosted RABDF/NMR Gold Cup Open Day after being crowned the winner of the prestigious 2018 Gold Cup competition. Awarded the accolade for their high level of focus in all areas of their 1,300 pedigree Holstein dairy business, the 2019 Gold Cup Open Day offered an insight into the farm’s ‘progression for succession’ through various talks to almost 3,000 attendees and 75 trade stands.
Achieving and maintaining a high level of health and welfare for young stock is one priority for the business, who have made changes to their feeding strategy on the farm to ensure this.
Optimising Early Life Nutrition
To become more efficient, the farm decided to optimise early life nutrition for calves to improve the development, health and lactation performance of their herd.
Using growth rates as a short term indicator to identify areas of improvement, the farm used Energized Calf Milk products to support optimal development, resilience to disease and longevity in calves to achieve long term rearing objectives.
Speaking at the event, Georgina Thomas, Ruminant Technical Business Manager for Trouw Nutrition said: “Early nutrition is a vital strategy to boost production sustainably. With feed conversion at its highest in the first few weeks of a calf’s life than at any other point in the growth cycle, it is important calves are fed between 10-15 litres a day and have access to adlib milk and straw. Do not be afraid to feed volumes as it will be impossible to make up the shortfall in growth rates and organ development.”
“Organ development in calves is greatest before 50 days of ages so nutritional strategies should provide calves with adequate nutrients in a useable form during this period. For instance, calves fed higher levels of nutrients pre-weaning have an increased resistance when challenged with enteric pathogens one month after weaning. So milk quality is vital to optimising calf nutrition.”
Overall, I had an really insightful day at Metcalfe’s farm seeing first-hand how the family run business has expanded over the years as well as learning about all aspects of cow and young-stock health.
It was fantastic to see a high-performing dairy in action, especially one which carefully and critically monitors business performance and its animals - the sheer scale of their operations amazed me!
I would highly recommend attending a Gold Cup Open Day – after all, what farmer doesn’t enjoy having a nosey around someone else’s farm!
NFU members interested in entering the competition can find more information here.