A different mindset is required for dairy farmers who want to feed dairy-beef crossbred calves. Purina Animal Nutrition Director of Nutrition Services Tom Earleywine says these calves need to be handled differently from purebred dairy calves. “There’s been years and years of history on the dairy side of the business where the Holstein bull calf was not a high-value calf and as a result, we’ve built systems to raise a low-cost calf.” The dairy-beef cross is now more valuable and deserves more investment. “If you don’t take advantage of that hybrid vigor because you don’t provide enough nutrition, you’re not going to get much of a gain out of that feed efficiency but if you provide enough nutrition to allow them to efficiently gain you can actually reduce your cost per pound by feeding them more.” A traditional dairy calf may be fed two quarts of milk replacer twice a day, while the young dairy-beef cross would require three quarts. Earleywine will participate in this week’s World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.
