The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here, myself, Emily, and Dr. Bradley J Heinz. Today, we are continuing the trend of it all being about Bradley. Emily's a little disappointed that it's not back to the Emily Show, but we need one more week of just Dr. Bradley J Heinz.
Dr. Bradley J Heinz: That's probably enough. I don't know how much more Emily can handle.
Joe: I know.
Emily: I just don't know how much we can handle losing more listeners.
Joe: That's a very good point. That's a valid point, especially as we increase the total for Jerseys every week.
Bradley: That's right. Jersey is the correct answer, so add another one.
Joe: That's another one.
Emily: No. Anyways, I'll try to right the ship here since I'm the one who got us off track. Last week we talked about Bradley and all of the cool things he gets to do in conferences he gets to go to. He was at the ADSA Discover Conference where they were talking a lot about calves. I would say the one subject on there that we probably got the most hung up on or spent the most time talking about was housing, and specifically, pair housing, a little bit on the group housing side in that. We just wanted to take the opportunity to dive into that a little bit deeper and get the matter of fact, opinions and thoughts of one, Dr. Bradley J Heinz.
Joe: The pair housing is a big thing. Group housing, huge. In practice, I saw some of both, but almost all of my clients were still using individual housing. I think we're seeing a trend starting in the other direction. Like Bradley mentioned last week, there's going to be some requirements for some producers, organic value producers, to have at least pair housing in 2023. We figured we'd better dive into it. If it's something people are interested in, we better get some of the details in there. Let's start with pair housing, Bradley. Remind everyone the benefits of pair housing and why we look at pairs over individuals.
Bradley: If we think about pair housing, it's pretty easy to start that. That's probably a benefit. Most people just take two calf hutches and put them together and make a little bit bigger fence around it so they can socialize and run in both hutches. Most people already have the infrastructure already there to be able to do that. Now, if you have domes, or something like that, it might be a little more difficult. They would probably work though if you took the grain feeder out and everything, but it's pretty easy to start. Most people are doing it because of the socialization aspect of it, and that's where everybody's moving in the dairy industry.
Joe: One of the things I think about with pair housing, and like you said, it's really easy to start, especially if you just take two hutches and put them together. What I see when that happens a lot is that calves love to cram into one hutch, which is not quite enough space for most calves.
Bradley: We're doing pair housing out here in part of our research and you see that quite often actually, the two calves are in the same hutch. When they're getting close to weaning at 250 pounds, there is not much room left in that calf hutch for both of them. They cram in there, especially during the winter, they're all together.
Emily: I think they like to be with their buddy, especially in winter, it helps keep them warm, share body heat. If they're especially crammed into the hutch, imagine how nice and warm it must get in there. From a cold stress standpoint, it makes a lot of sense.
Joe: Cold stress makes sense. The big thing is the bedding's hard to keep up with. Now you've taken two calves and then put them in half as much space. At least what I've seen, they tend to use the same hutch regardless of the condition of the bedding. Even if the other hutch has nice clean dry bedding, a lot of times they're used to going in one or the other and they stick to the one even if it's all muddy. It can be a bedding issue as well. Do you see that, Brad?
Bradley: Yes. Once in a while we'll see that where we're tending to bed the same calf hutch all the time because that's the one that they typically go into. You might have to bed more often depending on two calves making a mess in one hutch. That may be a challenge for pair housing.
Joe: We got into a little bit last week that it's really good for their social development behavior. Pair housing is that way. What we didn't talk about last week was any benefit to production. What do we see there, Bradley, what do we see with pair housing versus individuals?
Bradley: If you think about it from a growth standpoint, our colleagues at Minnesota in the vet school, Whitney Knauer, she found that calves had better growth rates, was it 34 pounds more, at weaning compared to those calves that were individually housed. They found a little bit greater weight gain. We haven't necessarily found that here in Morris yet. We get adequate gains. We're getting two and a quarter pounds per day, so there is nothing wrong with that at all. I think it just depends on the farm, a lot of weather conditions, you name it, what it might be, how much milk you feed them to see how much growth you can get out of them.
Some studies have shown excellent growth and some are the same as an individual one.
Joe: That study, just to clarify from Whitney, showed 15 pounds more growth in the paired calves than the individual calves.
Emily: Bradley messed up. We better keep that in.
Joe: We can keep that in.
Emily: Bradley messed up.
Bradley: Once in a while. Once in a while.
Joe: We'll keep it in. We'll keep it. 15 pounds more in the paired calves is what Whitney saw, which is a big deal. That's a third-pound per day more for those calves, so that could be a big deal. Like Bradley said, that's not always the case with what people find and what they see in those studies, but we are showing some potential benefits to production with paired housing.
We mentioned it last week too, consumer acceptance is a huge piece of this as well. Visually, paired housing looks excellent for the dairy industry and consumers absolutely love it. Absolutely love it. That's been some work done by colleagues here at Minnesota to look at that. Bradley's been involved in some of that work as well. It's a big deal on that side. I think we mentioned that last week as well.
Bradley: One thing that people always think about is cross-sucking, and we talked about that last week. If you feed the calves enough milk and have grain and water available at all times, I don't think there's much cross-sucking going on at all if you manage it right. There could be some, there's no doubt about it, but there's ways to take care of it. I think if you feed them enough--
One thing that we do is sometimes you just leave the bucket then we feed with a nipple bucket, a Peach Teat nipple bucket, and we leave it in there for maybe an hour afterwards. If the calves are wanting to suck on something, they're going to probably go suck on the nipple bucket that we use to dispense milk instead of maybe sucking on each other. That's maybe one thing that people can do to help alleviate cross-sucking.
We also think about labor. There's a question about labor. Does it save any labor? I think the jury is still out there on whether paired housing will save labor or not. In my opinion and based on me feeding calves and watching it happen here is, we might not save a lot on labor. We're still feeding two calves individually, they just happen to be together. You still have all of that labor to feed those calves individually instead of a group of 5 or 10 or 15, which probably reduces some labor. I don't think there's going to be much labor savings from pair housing compared to individual housing.
Joe: That makes sense to me and I think that's a good segue into talking about group housing. Oh, I'm sorry, we can't go there yet. We've skipped over some of the details of paired housing, some of the major things that are super important. One of the things that we didn't really mention last week, we haven't mentioned it today is, when do you pair them? At what age do you pair these calves up? Maybe we mentioned it last week, but to be clear, it's not something you can do late. It can't be happening four or five weeks of age.
Bradley: You probably want to keep those calves within 7 to 10 days of age. We probably don't go more in about three to four here, just to keep them all in that same age range. Otherwise, you got a big calf and a small calf and they're going to pick on each other and steal milk and all kinds of aspects. Keeping them within a week, I would recommend, I think you'll do just fine. Any more than a week, you might have to start a new pair.
Emily: Bradley, I'm curious, as we think about the always present overarching theme of The Moos Room in every episode, management. Are there any major or even minor management practice differences that you've noticed with paired housing versus, we'll just say individual housing for now? Between those two, what might be some different management pieces or something else you need to think to look for, or something like that?
Bradley: There's probably not much difference between individual housing. One of the things that comes along with it, and this can be for group housing as well, is if you're using a bottle or a nipple bucket or something and you dump milk in there, you're going to have two calves running towards that bottle or bucket right away. You got to be fast to be able to have the other one there, or you're going to have to fight one calf off and they're going to steal and all kinds of stuff. If you're not ready to take care of that right away, it can be an issue that some people might not like.
Otherwise, as far as management, there is in my mind, not much difference than individual. You have a little bit bigger fence to confine them, which can be an issue if you have to purchase some new fencing. I took some panels and just cut them up and made them work, but it can be a challenge. Otherwise, you have two grain buckets, two water buckets. It's really the same thing outside of maybe having to bed one of the hutches more than the other, but I tend to think the management is about the same.
Joe: One thing I think of that I saw when we were looking at groups and/or individuals is trying to figure out how do you know who ate and who didn't? That's the same with the groups like Bradley was kind of alluding to. You have individual pens, you drop a bottle in or you fill up a bucket and you just keep going. You don't have to observe much because you can look back and see who drank and who didn't.
There's a little bit of a management change there for me where you have to actually watch the calves and be a little better at picking up on slight behavioral changes or posture changes in those calves in a group pen or paired housing to be able to see who is actually eating, who's just coming up and standing with everybody and not actually eating. You got to be able to be a little more observant and have the time to watch those kind of things happen so that you don't miss a sick calf in there.
Bradley: Yes, you always got to watch calves, no matter individual, group housing, pair housing, just to make sure they're healthy and doing well. There's no way to make things easier that way. You just got to watch them.
Emily: You can't replace observation.
Bradley: You cannot. You are correct.
Emily: Not even with a sensor, Bradley.
Bradley: You cannot even do it with a sensor.
Joe: I feel like that's a pretty pivotal announcement out loud from Bradley.
Bradley: I have some sensors on them, so I'm trying.
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Joe: Okay, let's talk about group housing. Like Bradley said, maybe the labor savings comes from stepping it up another level and going straight to group housing. Brad, can you just walk us through, when you have group housing, how do you make it work? We talked about how with paired calves, we want them paired within a week, a week old. Otherwise, you start a new pair. How does it work with groups?
Bradley: With groups, if you think about pairing calves together or grouping them together, I follow the same thumb rule, 7 to 10 days. I like to keep it under 7, maybe go a little bit longer, but less than 10. Otherwise, you're going to have probably bigger issues than a pair housing. If you have the oldest calf and the youngest calf two weeks apart, that can be a problem in a group housing situation. Especially when you wean them, you want to wean them all together, so you don't want one calf that's maybe two weeks older than the other. Seven days, I would stick with that thumb rule as well for group housing.
Joe: Does that change a little bit as you get into an automatic feeder because you can individually make weaning plans for calves and identify them in the computer?
Bradley: Yes, it may be a little bit different in an auto feeder. I think you might be able to get away with two weeks, sometimes maybe fudge to three weeks, but I wouldn't go any more than that. Three weeks is really pushing it in an auto feeder. Two weeks, you could probably get away with, but I would caution going any more than that. You still have the problem. Like an auto feeder, you get young calf going into the stall, the big calf is going to come in and push it out and try and steal the milk, even though it won't be allowed to. It's a problem. There's bully calves. That's just what happens.
Joe: As far as disease goes, that's what we want to avoid, is having older calves and younger calves together. Two weeks is a long time. That oldest calf is exiting some of the danger zone when it comes to scours, and that brand new calf is just starting that. There's a blotted disease transfer that could happen there. As tight of windows as you can. I think about this with--
Bradley has a unique opportunity in some ways because he seasonally calves, so he doesn't have a ton of calves up at Morris, but all his calves come pretty quick. The size of the dairy, how many calves you have in a week, can really dictate what you want to do. Group housing might not be for you because you don't have enough calves that quickly to make it work, but pair housing might work. Otherwise, individual might be the way to go because you just don't have enough calves coming in a short time frame.
Bradley: We're lucky that we calve everything in a two month time period so we can have big groups. If you're probably 100-120 cows, you might be able to get away with having groups of 5 to 10. If you're less than that number of cows, pair housing might be the best option for grouping them because you just don't have enough cows calving at that time to have a big group. For me, I think 10 is not enough in a group. I'm looking for 15 to 20 just because of labor savings.
You know what? Long time ago, when I first started here, I did a study on looking at 5 calves versus 10 calves, and I didn't find any difference. I found that if you look at it from a labor perspective, it takes more labor when you got 5 calves in a group than 10 calves. I'm all for 10. That's where we settle at here, is 10 calves per group.
Emily: Bradley's sad they're not bigger.
Bradley: Correct.
Emily: I think that that's important to what you're saying, Brad, about keeping the age groups close and letting your calving seasons, if you do go seasonal, letting that help you make this decision in what style of housing is going to work best for your calves. As we mentioned, with those bigger calves, if they are being bullying, then we could be looking at smaller calves, first and foremost, not getting all of their milk or other feed. Second, increase stress on the smaller calves, which we know can impact immune systems.
It's really important to not just go, "Oh, well, Bradley told me that I should have groups of 20 calves," and you have a one-month age range. That's not going to work for your farm, and it's going to cause more problems. It's important that we note figuring out what's going to fit for your system.
Bradley: I agree. We have enough calves where we can make 10 work, but I've seen a lot of farms do five. If you're thinking about group housing, by no means should you just all of a sudden have 10 calves or 15 calves in a group. It will be a mess for you, and you won't be able to figure it out, and it'll be a bust. Ease into it slowly. That's where you would start with maybe five calves in a group, if you're able to do that, because they make nice group feeders that are five nipples on there that work out quite well.
Start slow. Don't get too crazy. I'm the crazy one, and I'll figure those out when I want to put 20 calves in a group and figure out how to feed them, but I would start out slow first.
Joe: We need to cover with group housing, with pair housing, how much space these calves need. That is one of the main things that we need to work on. When we talk about adding hutches together, we've just doubled the space, which seems to work just great. When we start talking about having five calves in the pen, the pen has to be big enough for all five of those calves to be there. What are you looking at for space, Brad?
Bradley: You would like to see 30 to 40 square feet per calf. I think the more the better, obviously, to be able to group house. For our calves, we have about 30 feet by 40 feet is where we put 10 calves in. You can figure out what the square footage of that is. I don't know what it is. My math skills are not on today.
Emily: How did you get a PhD?
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: That's 120 feet per calf, Bradley.
Bradley: That's a lot. That's for 20 calves.
Joe: That's for 20 calves?
Bradley: That's for 20 calves.
Joe: Oh okay, sorry. It's 60 square feet then, because I divided it by 10.
Bradley: 60 square feet.
Joe: Still a lot. Still a lot. What's up, everybody? This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. If you're confused right now, I was also confused, so I've got it figured out now. Bradley was talking about a 30 by 40 foot space where he keeps 10 calves. In reality, he has a 30 by 40-foot space where he keeps 20 calves and it's split in the middle into two groups of 10. I hope that clarifies things. I was confused at the time. Hopefully, you're not confused anymore either. Let's get back to it.
Bradley: We're running 60 square feet per calf in ours that are outdoors. Now, we allow them to go outdoors. They go indoors where we have deep-bedded straw and then they can come outside where we have a feed bunk in the water. The more space, the better. When you're weaning 10 calves in a group that are 250 pounds each, you need some space. You need a lot of space.
Joe: That makes sense. For me, if you're going to have 60 square feet total, that would be 30 outside and 30 inside. At some point, they're all going to be outside or they're all going to be inside, especially when the weather's not great. I think that still hits our minimum of 30 square feet per calf for that setup.
Bradley: When we talk about weaning a group, we always wean based on the last calf that we put in the group. If you have 7 to 10 days of spread in age, you want to wean at, say, nine weeks. That nine weeks is the last calf that you put in there. One calf is going to be 9 weeks and the other one maybe 10 weeks or a little more than 10 weeks. You're going to have that but you want to do an all-in, all-out. You don't want to just cherry-pick calves off at the time. You want to wean them all at the same time. That's my suggestion is, wean it based off the age of the last calf that you've put in there.
Emily: That's where I think you can see a lot of labor savings too.
Bradley: I agree. I agree.
Joe: All right. All-in, all-out. Steal that from the poultry and the pig guys, and that's the way to go. When it comes to biosecurity, we said 30 to 40 square feet per calf. If you're going to have indoor-outdoor space, make sure you have at least 30 square feet in both spaces for each calf for all the calves in that group. Potential labor savings when it comes to group housing. Maybe not so much labor savings when it comes to paired housing over individual housing.
Potential production benefits because of the social aspect of this for paired housing and group housing over individuals. Pair them early and put them in groups early. Try to get those ages as close together. Under a week is what we're aiming for. Does that seem like a fair summary?
Bradley: Yes.
Joe: Let's wrap it there. Emily, since you're better at the plugs, it's time for you to do the plugs.
Emily: All right. Wonderful. If you have questions, concerned, scathing rebuttal, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Twitter at UMN Moosroom and at UMN Farm Safety and be sure to visit our website, extension.umn.edu. Bye.
Joe: Bye.
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