Milk Replacer, Is More Always Better?

One thing that has been a hot topic for the last few years is the plane of nutrition for wet calves. Do you feed more? Less? Is this worth the extra money and labor?

While we absolutely can’t speak for everyone, we can speak for ourselves, and through our many experiments and trials, we have come to some pretty eye opening conclusions along the way. 

First, we have heard other producers say that increasing milk fed in the pre-weaning phase did not correlate to a visibly larger calf one month after weaning. The difference between 2 quarts and 4 quarts per calf per feeding is a significant difference in young calf nutrition, but also a HUGE difference in the money you are funneling into each calf.

This is where ROI comes in. While young calves utilize milk more efficiently than they will use any other feed type the rest of their life, it is also the most expensive feed input. 

We are firm believers that the sooner you get the rumen thoroughly developed and effectively digesting solid feed, the better off the calf is, and the better off your wallet is too. 

Here are a few things we have tried over the years, and what we have found. We started feeding 10 oz. of milk replacer into 2 quarts total solution since we started raising dairy beef in 2005. 

We fed our calves that way until 2018, when all of the new research was coming out saying that increasing wet calf nutrition would pay off in the bulk tank down the road. While we only custom raise replacement heifers, we were always looking for ways to raise better calves for the dairy, and we also had goals of our own that we wanted to meet. Some of these goals included 2.0lb ADG at 10 weeks and decrease medication costs and cost per pound of gain. We decided to try increasing feeding rates to 12oz into 2 quarts + 1 pint, to maintain the same solids level, but deliver more nutrition per feeding. Much to our surprise, we actually went the wrong way in terms of treatments and ADG. Needless to say, that put a bad taste in our mouths for feeding a higher plane of nutrition.

After that experiment cost us about $18,000 in extra milk replacer costs, we were gun shy for a LONG time. 

Our next experiment with an increased plane of nutrition was in 2019 when we installed an auto feeder. We started off with our regular 4L per day allocation, split into 4 “feedings”. Needless to say, it went poorly, very poorly. We weren’t ready to call it quits on the feeder yet, and considered that this might be the perfect opportunity to try increasing milk replacer again. At this point we were using Denkavit milk replacer that we were much more confident in, so it made us even more confident in our choice to try more milk. We increased allocation from 4L to 6L,  an increase of 28lbs of milk per calf over the milk fed phase. Calves were now fed a total of 83 lbs of powder, which added an extra $30/calf in milk replacer cost. While we did see HUGE improvements in growth, deathloss, and medication rates on the auto feeder calves fed 6L compared to the 4L per day group, we still were barely making it to where our “normal” calf program (2 quarts 2x fed in headlocks, group housed) calves were at in terms of those measurements, causing our cost per pound of gain to go up quite a bit. We weren’t happy with the performance and increased costs of the auto feeder so we decided to go back to our original way and take the auto feeder out. 

We fed 2 quarts 2x per day up until just this last month. We, once again, wanted to give it another go in some calves that were already having some health challenges, to see if we could turn them around and decrease medication and increase growth. While we are still waiting on growth data (they are a week from being weaned), we have seen large improvements in calf  health and body condition by adding an extra quart of milk per feeding for 14 days (from day 14-28). It will be very interesting to see how this experiment pans out, and how it affects our cost per pound of gain! And while this isn’t a perfect experiment, because of the fact that these calves were having health challenges already, it will be an interesting comparison to see how much that extra 2 quarts per day can really do for them. We will be eager to give you an update in a few weeks. 

A final note, each calf program is unique, there isn’t another one like yours out there. That being said, what works or doesn’t work for us, might or might not work for you. If you’re feeding 2 gallons of milk per day and are happy with your calf program, great! All we aim to do is get your wheels turning and give you a different perspective on what has worked for us as calf raisers and what hasn’t. It is so easy to get wrapped up in raising a certain type of calf, that we forget the economics that go into each pound that we put on an animal. We are guilty of it too! As farmers, we have to make sure that we are optimizing our investment in the best way possible, which could be through an increased plane of nutrition, or it could be through utilizing another strategy. 

If you are interested in the milk replacer we use, please reach out and we will connect you with the proper people and resources!