#WednesdaysWisdom
Our Ruminant Territory Manager, Kelly Jackson, talks about getting it right, right from the Start.
Lets face it…. all farmers, whether large or medium scale, including lifestylers, like to sit back and admire their cattle and how well they have grown since the day they were brought into the calf shed.
How do we achieve that much-admired cow, now growing well and looking healthy in the paddock? This is the question a lot of people would like the answer to.
When rearing calves, along with their daily intake of milk, Fiber Start® 20% or Fiber Gain® 16% can be offered from day 1 of coming into the calf shed.
A great way to offer Fiber Fresh to your calves is with our lollipop system. By standing the wrapped bag into an old car tyre, and taking the top 10cm of plastic off so that the calves can nibble and play with the feed initially it allows them time to get accustomed to the smell and the taste of the feed.
FiberStart® is compatible with your preferred meal – whereas FiberGain® is a complete fibre + grain feed. As the calves get older the intake will increase and the bag can be cut lower each time, thus keeping product fresh and appealing to the calves.
If it is preferred that meal be laid out into feed troughs, this can be easily done by cutting 44-gallon barrel drum length ways. Feeding troughs should always be off the ground. Mount the half drums onto two car tyres, one on each end. Bolt the car tyres through the plastic to the base of troughs – the trough can also be towed around a paddock in this configuration. Make sure there is enough space for every calf to have access to the trough.
By using the trough method, you can easily mix the FiberStart® with your preferred meal at the same time.
In those first few weeks, feed intakes are very small. However, when it comes time to start restricting the milk, the interest in FiberStart® or FiberGain® will increase rapidly and from that point on the consumption will grow steadily.
Introducing Fiber Fresh early will encourage faster rumen and papillae development, allowing calves to transition and develop onto grass much faster. This also leads to life-long benefits to health and production.
Maximum rumen development occurs between four and ten weeks and this is where fibre, such as that found in Fiber Fresh’s FiberStart® or FiberGain®
, brings the maximum benefit. By feeding fibre during this time, the calf is following a natural path of development with an easily digested fibre that lays down gut health for the remainder of the animal’s life.
Seven Tips to feeding Fiber Fresh
1️⃣ Don’t panic if they do not seem to be eating much in the first two weeks
2️⃣ Remember the plentiful milk being supplied initially will be covering their feed requirements during this period, and the calves are only exploring and investigating this foreign feed that looks and tastes nothing like milk
3️⃣ Just ensure the offering remains fresh, and discard any residue left over every couple of days. Calves investigate food by licking (not chewing) and therefore cover the offering with saliva which quickly goes stale and unappealing
4️⃣ Many a time the advice to a farmer has been to discard the entire offering and replace with fresh feed – the calves reaction has been to immediately take a renewed interest
5️⃣ Ensure that before any calves come into your calf barn it has been cleaned out from the year before. This includes floors being sprayed out with a disinfectant to kill any bugs and viruses left behind.
6️⃣ Fresh bedding is laid down to keep your calves warm
7️⃣ Always have clean fresh water available for calves to drink
