ChewintheCud Podcast
The Team, based in the South West of England, explore their passion for cows and the dairy industry as they talk about a range of industry related topics.
For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast. ChewintheCud Ltd is also on Facebook & LinkedIn. You can also email us at podcast@chewinthecud.com
ChewintheCud Podcast
Forgotten Heifers: The Lost Months
What happens to your dairy heifers between weaning and calving? This question reveals a critical blind spot on many UK dairy farms. While we meticulously monitor pre-weaning calves and track age at first calving, those crucial months in between often become a forgotten period where potential growth, health, and future productivity can be compromised.
Farm veterinarian Emily Linton takes us through this overlooked phase, revealing eye-opening facts about its impact on your bottom line. The financial stakes are significant - rearing costs range from £1,000-£3,000 per heifer, with each day beyond 24 months adding £2.87. More alarmingly, heifers calving at 30 months are five times more likely to be culled within 50 days, creating a devastating financial loss as they never reach their break-even point in the herd.
We explore practical strategies to optimize this period, from tailoring protein levels in feed (avoiding common overfeeding) to implementing disease monitoring tools like lung scanning that can detect subclinical respiratory issues before they impact growth. Emily shares targeted growth benchmarks, emphasizing that heifers should reach 55-60% of mature bodyweight at breeding and 85% at calving, with first lactation yields at approximately 80% of mature cow production.
The podcast concludes with valuable insights on transitioning heifers into the milking herd, including surprising tips like using vinegar to reduce bullying and scheduling introductions during afternoon milking when established cows are less territorial. Whether you're struggling with inconsistent growth rates, delayed calving, or poor first lactation performance, this episode provides the monitoring tools and management practices to transform your replacement heifer program.
Subscribe to ChewintheCud Podcast for more practical insights that challenge conventional thinking and improve profitability in UK dairy farming. How might your dairy business benefit from giving those "forgotten heifers" the attention they deserve?
For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast. ChewintheCud Ltd is also on Facebook & LinkedIn. You can email us directly at podcast@chewinthecud.com
This is the Chewing the Cut podcast, a podcast for the UK dairy industry, brought to you from the southwest of England and listen to Around the World. Hello and welcome to Tunicud Podcast. My name is Andrew Jones and with me today is Sarah Bolt. How are you doing, Sarah?
Sarah Bolt:I'm really good. Thank you, andrew. How are you doing today?
Andrew Jones:I've got to be honest with you. I am feeling shattered. Why? Oh, I've been at the Gillingillingham shasper show the last couple of days, so I've had a stand there and um for people that aren't used to on the other side. You don't realize that, and I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong, and you know this, sarah, but it's really hard work being on a stand, isn't it? Being there, there and just looking and talking to people and you think, oh well, you don't do a lot, because my other half was telling me how many steps she did taking the kids around and stuff, which is probably three times what I did today. But I suppose it's mentally shattered rather than physically shattered.
Sarah Bolt:Yeah, it's standing up all day as well generally and it's just different work to sort of our normal everyday and therefore it makes it quite hard work.
Andrew Jones:I guess, yeah, good couple of days. Just glad it wasn't the 32 degrees it was when we set up on Tuesday afternoon. And then the other thing about shows. I mean, I've shared this with Sarah already, admittedly, but I was at Honiton Show last week and someone had asked me to help on a stand because someone else couldn't make it. Yeah, and they said, bring your banner, put it up, that's fine, otherwise probably person wouldn't have known who I was.
Andrew Jones:And anyway, I'm just talking to, uh, the other person on the stand and this guy approached me, wouldn't know from Adam, still have no idea who he is, but I'd like to give him a shout out. And he walks up. He's got a child in a push chair, another little one walking beside him, and he just walks up to me. He just goes, um, just like to say love the podcast, listen to everyone, they're fantastic, love what you do, keep what you're doing. And I was completely taken aback going. Uh, thank you.
Andrew Jones:Um, I guess that's what we do it for and I'm like, would you like a drink or something, trying to hope to get him to find out who he was, at least so I can give him a proper shout out. He goes no, no, no, must, must keep moving. Kids will get agitated and off he goes, and that was that was. That was it? So I have no idea who this guy is, and I'd just like to shout out and say thank you very much, because you absolutely made my day, and that is why we do this is is has always been to hopefully make people think about what they're doing and maybe do something better or at least enjoy what we're talking about.
Sarah Bolt:And it's so nice that somebody actually made the effort to come over and say it, because a lot of people probably think it but don't actually say it. And actually saying it just as you say it makes your day, doesn't it.
Andrew Jones:It does, it does, and you know. All we see is the numbers, and they are, you know, always. You know they're increasing and getting better and better and, which is fantastic, it means more people are listening. But when someone does that, it just absolutely made my day. So really like to give that guy a shout out. Sorry, I don't know who you are, but thank you very much and hopefully, if you listen to all of them, you'll hear this as well. But enough of that sort of stuff. We are continuing our journey. I mean, last episode we spoke to Ken March talking about using amino acids to help the development of heifers and what that can bring to the party in terms of improved growth, improved fertility, improved health, et cetera, et cetera. But this time our guest is talking about well, effectively, in some ways part of the same period, but I suppose that lost period, shall we call it between post-weaning and well, really bullying, and then almost again, from bullying to calving, often heifers not saying all the time, but often heifers are kind of forgotten about, aren't they?
Sarah Bolt:They get probably left on the shelf a little bit and just hopefully they get on with what they need to get on with. And I guess it's just Emily really makes us stop and think about what we can do differently. And you know it's a good listen.
Andrew Jones:It is a good listen. It is a good listen. So, yeah, so, yeah, so hopefully you enjoyed today's episode. Listen, it is a good listen. So, yeah, so, uh, yeah, so hopefully you enjoyed today's episode. So, uh, let's go here talk about post weaning management and and maybe what we can do to improve what we're doing. This podcast has been brought to you today by tune the cud limited, who offer completely independent dairy and beef nutrition, our signals, advice and training, along with ROMS mobility scoring. For more details on these and other services available, please visit our website, wwwtunethecudcom, or email us directly on nutrition at tunethecudcom. Tune the Cud Ltd now offers first aid training from a registered first aid at work trainer and experienced minor injuries practitioner. For more details, please visit our website, wwwtunethecudcom, or email us directly on training at tunethecudcom. Hello, I'm Andrew Jones and I'm Sarah.
Sarah Bolt:Bolt.
Andrew Jones:And welcome to the TunaCut podcast, a podcast for the UK dairy industry.
Sarah Bolt:Farmer, advisor, processor and everyone else. We have topics and episodes that will interest you.
Andrew Jones:We discuss the practical and the technical aspects of different UK dairy industry topics.
Sarah Bolt:We aim to make you think about what you're doing and ask yourself can it be done differently?
Andrew Jones:listen to us speak with specialists from inside and outside the industry about their area of expertise subscribe and listen to episodes for free on your favorite podcast platform sign up to our website, wwwchewingthecudcom for podcast notifications, so you never miss an episode.
Sarah Bolt:And links to our socials, including Instagram. Chewing the Cud Podcast. All one word, and remember no G.
Andrew Jones:Or email us direct on podcast at chewingthecudcom.
Sarah Bolt:If you like what we do, please share and leave us a review to show your support. And that's it. Enjoy today's episode.
Andrew Jones:Hello and welcome back to Tune the Cut podcast and today our guest is Emily Linton. Good morning, Emily. How are you Good?
Emily Linton:morning Very excited to be here.
Andrew Jones:Thank you, thank you. So, emily, we're going to talk about post-weaning heifer development and growth and then movement into the main herd. But before we do that, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be where you are today.
Emily Linton:So I'm a vet, a farm animal vet. I graduated from Bristol University many years ago. I've always worked down in the southwest, in Devon and Cornwall. Three years ago I took a role with the Food, farming and Countryside Commission and I've been working with them, but this was alongside clinical vet work, so I was doing the two roles alongside each other and so I was doing that until very recently, working on, you know, farming, transition and policy in that sort of area. I'm now back vetting four days a week and, yeah, working on general, general, clinical farm animal work, as well as pursuing my passions in young stock and sustainability.
Andrew Jones:As I say, and obviously today I mean this this has been in the pipeline for a little while, but just recently you've actually had an article published on this very subject, haven't you? Is it weaning and beyond using data to engage farmers in post weaning heifer management, published in? Is it livestock magazine May, june 2025?
Emily Linton:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so it's a peer review paper published in UK livestock.
Andrew Jones:Yeah, yeah, uk vet livestock yeah, and I know, congratulations on having it published, but uh, it's interesting to read because I mean, it's ultimately what we were going to talk about today anyway. But just seeing it, uh, some of the stuff you've got in there is is absolutely fantastic. So I mean, yes, all the um, all the effort is put into that we or should be put into that weaning or pre-weaning, I should say from birth, because that's when you get your best food conversion, when you get your best growth, when you're setting the whole lactation up, moving forward, or the animal up, I should say moving forward. But what's made you have these concerns to then obviously lead on to this paper and then on to be here today with the podcast?
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely. So I think you know we're getting much more proactive as vets now and engaging in monitoring young stock health pre weaning. So you know we're really good at running total proteins, doing daily live weight gain, looking at mortality and morbidity data and you know we're seeing some really good results because of that. You know some real positive changes on farm. And then, as you said, we put all that work into making sure we're doing the right thing in that pre weaning period.
Emily Linton:We work hard to try and get the weaning period right and then it's almost like these animals get a little bit forgotten post-weaning and so I was finding, you know, the next time I was being presented with these animals was when they were, you know, when I was seeing them for PD. Now, if these animals were sort of 14, 15 months old and in calf, absolutely fine, nothing to worry about. But of course you know that wasn't always the case. Invariably I was seeing animals that were older than that, that were PD negative and because once you've got to that stage you're never going to hit your target age of first calving of 23, 24 months. It's too late.
Emily Linton:So there was sort of this gap between weaning and PDing, that sort of. They seem to get a little bit lost into the ether and, of course, you know they're larger animals, they're a bit more difficult to handle. Some people send them to off ground. So, you know, there was all these sort of complicating factors coming in as well and it sort of just made me think. You know, I think we need to look at this area in a little bit more detail and also try and use the data we have available to see how heifers are performing within herds, you know, are they reaching the targets they should? What are the targets they should be, you know, reaching? And if they're not, what can we go back and do about it?
Sarah Bolt:It's really interesting, isn't it, emily, that we have this. You know, the metrics that we look at are all in that sort of pre-weaning to weaning period and then we, as you say, we suddenly forget them until we suddenly go agent first carving KPI. So we've got all those months in between that we're not actually even thinking of a KPI, that we even want to be know whether we're actually doing. We even want to be know whether we're actually doing what we want to be doing, so reaching the targets we want to be reaching.
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and so that was, you know, sort of the catalyst for, you know, this work, the sort of the report that this paper talks about and, yeah, everything that's within it.
Andrew Jones:I'd say it's not just so from the vet's point of view as well. I mean, you know, from my point as nutritionist. Let's say you're an autumn calving herd. You might get them a post weaning diet, but then they go out for the summer. You don't see them again. So they're coming in the autumn. We want a pre-bullying ration to get them ready to to bull and be served. And, as you say there's, you might not see them for six months or whatever it is in between and, as you say, they sort of get a bit lost, don't they often? Because, as you say, they're usually on further ground away or wherever it happens to be rented ground a couple of miles down the road. They're not so easy to go and see from your own point of view.
Emily Linton:No, I mean, I've been presented with heifers before that you know, all these animals have just, you know, just bought them in from grazing. You know, can we synchronize them to get them in calf because they're the right age? And I've looked at them thinking, you know, they're not your best looking heifers. And then I start scanning them and you know we've got ovaries that aren't doing anything. I'm saying I'm not going to waste your money on synchronizing these animals.
Andrew Jones:you know you need to feed them a bit more, and you know, and get them cycling, and and then, yeah, as you said, we're then losing time yeah, you know, you say from that point of view, you want them in the herd or you want feeding them, probably like a month before you even start doing anything like that, to get them back cycling to, to, yeah, get the rising energy plane to get them moving again yeah, and I think it's.
Emily Linton:It's not, it's not just that, it's sort of taking those steps, you know, back further as well. Um, you know, we know that the greatest feed conversion efficiency is in that pre-weaning period. So it's utilizing that because, again, you know, we know that if we get the desired growth rates in that pre-weaning period that we are, you know we're going to get rates in that pre-weaning period that we are, you know we're going to get better milk yields, we're going to get better duration in the herd, we're switching on genes for fertility and you know metabolic processes, there's all these mammary development. There are all these things happening.
Emily Linton:If we capitalize on that, and then it's still thinking about that post weaning. You know the cheapest time to feed a heifer is immediately post weaning. So if we can get them growing really well in that time period, keep them on that plane of growth that we want, then yeah, absolutely. We might want to increase things a little bit in the run up to service, but we're not going to be having to play that massive catch up game when it's much more expensive to feed these animals because we've kept them moving in the direction we want.
Sarah Bolt:So just picking up on those sort of daily live weight gains that you know sort of, most farmers would understand that they would take the adult weight of their cattle and work out and it's perhaps something around the 0.8 kilos per day as an overall. But it goes back to you saying about that feed conversion efficiency being much better when they're younger and everything else. So actually just accepting 0.8 in those early months perhaps isn't enough. Is that the case? Yeah?
Emily Linton:absolutely, you're absolutely right. If we, if we look from sort of birth to to calving and what we're looking to achieve, which is, you know, it's that that 85 percent of mature body weight, isn't it, then yes, the average over that time period is sort of 0.75, 5.8 kilos a day. But yeah, to really capitalize on that feed conversion efficiency in that pre-weaning period, really we should be looking sort of more at 0.9 a kilo a day if we can, potentially pushing to, you know, 1.2 kilos a day in that immediate post-weaning period, making the most of that. You know that cheapest time to feed them and when they're still laying down that muscle and that bone structure we haven't got to puberty and when post-puberty it tends to be fat, they lay down more and then they become much, much less efficient.
Andrew Jones:I was going to say I know we're talking post-weaning, that's what we're here to talk, but really we need to emphasize, don't we, it's that pre-weaning. I mean, I know some people look at milk powder price and say, oh, it's so expensive but, relatively speaking, compared to having to feed them later on when they don't have that feed conversion efficiency, it's the much cheaper option, isn't it? To have a good milk powder, that that they get good growth rates from. Like you're saying that one minimum, one kilo a day, um, and that's when, like, 50 of their organ growth, all of those things happen. So while we're talking post weaning, we really need to start with a good pre-weaning phase, don't we?
Emily Linton:yeah, and just just to think, some figures. This is alex back's data um, so it's in euros per kilo, but you know you sort of well, we should say he's at bar University, isn't he? Yeah, absolutely yeah, professor in cattle nutrition, and you know, and very well known for his young stock work.
Emily Linton:Yes, yes, so he did some work that showed that the cost of gain in that pre-weaning period was €1.54 per kilo. In that immediate post-weaning period was 1 euro 54 per kilo. Um, in that immediate post-weaning period it goes down to 0.76 euros per kilo. So you know that's about half. By the time you get to an animal, um, that is sort of, you know, nearing calving, it's gone back up to 1.82 euros a kilo. So you know they're huge differences, aren't they? And you know, if you sort of have those figures in your head, it, it helps to, you know, justify a little bit more. You know why you're doing what you're doing.
Emily Linton:If we're talking costs for a minute, you remember that, um, the cost of rearing a heifer ranges from about 33,000 down to £1,000, with the average being about £1,800. So you know, and every day past that 24 months carving target that we're aiming for, I think it's about £2.87 a day that you're adding, and they've shown that if you're not carving heifers down till about 30 months, you're adding 25% onto your costs. You know these are big numbers and if you've got older heifers, you need to carry more on farm because it's taking them longer to carve in. So you're going to need. The costs are increased because you need more labour, more feed, more infrastructure or potentially, you know, you're going to start overstocking and then you get more disease coming in. So we've got costs associated there and all you know.
Emily Linton:So people think, oh, it's going to cost me more to feed these animals to get them to carve down at the right time. But that is massively outdone by all these other costs. If we, you know, if we delay the age at first carving, don't get them growing as we should and leave it too late for them to carve down definitely I'm going to throw my special, my specialist one in there as well and sort of carbon footprints of that that older you beat me to it there, sarah, because just what I was going to say was if you know, if I know some people are probably fed up of hearing it, but but if you're looking at your carbon footprint, it depends who your milk buyer is.
Andrew Jones:But I mean wearing my cow signals hat. If you can get that age of first calving down from two and a half to two, you've got a 30% reduction in methane because you're just not having to keep those animals around as long and they're effectively costing you all the time money environmentally. However you want to look at it, they're costing you sat.
Emily Linton:I think the other thing to remember around that as well, which all links in with you know, production costs and carbon footprinting and efficiency on farm is that these animals that carve later. So you know, if we take 30 months because that's the sort of the research that's been done heifers carving beyond that time are five times more likely to be culled within 50 days of carving.
Emily Linton:You know that's, that's massive they haven't even, yeah, they haven't even reached their break-even point. So the break-even point is sort of widely agreed to be about halfway through the second lactation. So it's at that point that your heifer has repaid her rearing costs and starts making you money. So these heifers that you're losing in your first lactation never, essentially, you know they're costing you money they never get to the point where they not only don't break even but they don't make you any money either. And you know it's been shown through various studies and interestingly, you know the data I have seen from farms in in practice as well that that loss rate in first lactation is up at around 17 19 percent. That's nearly a fifth of those animals. You know that's huge and there's a huge cost saving to be made there if we can, you know, keep these animals within the herd well, I mean I'm I'm just thinking back while we've been talking about it.
Andrew Jones:I think back to my old man, who never used to carve till three year old, and just the fact you had that extra bunch of heifers that were just sat there doing nothing the whole time. Okay, we're talking different times. This is back 30 plus years ago, but it's still they. They were, just they were. They were fully grown by the time they carved. They didn't need to be as that size when they grew. They need to be heifers and then grow into it and and you know, all the data now is showing more and more that it's right to be carving them.
Andrew Jones:As you say, 23, 24 months. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, we've said it's costing us financially. We said we're costing us environmentally, which obviously then potentially has an impact on our milk price, because obviously some milk buyers are doing that now. So if we go back to, we'll assume we've had a good weaning period, we've had a good pre-weaning, we've had a good weaning period. What would you recommend as some strategies going forward to ensure that those animals are monitored correctly all the way through until the point of calving?
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely so. I think you know we can look at a few areas, can't we? We've touched a little bit on the nutrition already. We need to make sure that we're feeding these animals properly. So we're actually quite bad at overfeeding our heifer's protein. And again, coming back to that environmental piece, you know, if we're overfeeding protein, that then gets excreted as urinary nitrogen, which contributes to the ammonia, nitrous oxide emissions, and we you know, we know how potent nitrous oxide is, so there's an environmental cost.
Andrew Jones:But also, if we're paying for this protein that's going in one end and just coming out the other end, it's a complete and well, the flip side of that is, as well as they're using energy to expel that, so you're not using your energy to grow as what efficiently as you could. If you got your proteins right and you're right once they go out to grass often in the spring, when you have a proper spring you know you've got high protein in the grass. You don't need those proteins in any supplementary feed.
Emily Linton:No, absolutely so. You know around 100 days. You know we can probably get away with about 16% protein going down to, you know sort of around 12% when they're reaching sort of 350 days. So I think that's something to bear in mind. But also, as you've just alluded to Andrew thinking about, you know the forage they're on. Are they on grass? What are they getting from that? If they're inside, my preference would be that they're on straw, probably until you know, or extremely good quality hay, probably until they're around six months.
Andrew Jones:And it's been shown that you know that they generally do much better if we hold off that silage until around six months of age and I would certainly, if you're feeding straw, highly, highly recommend that you pre-chop it with a tub grinder or whatever it happens to be, so that it is muzzle width and not. Otherwise. They just won't have the intakes and they'll sort through it. It needs to be pre-chopped yeah, yeah, and there's that.
Emily Linton:There's that lovely little thing, isn't there about if you're chopping your straw. They act as like toothpicks in the papillae. Yes, well just to stop those little pockets of ruminal acidosis.
Andrew Jones:And yeah, you know it works much well, I mean, I'm just taking from my own experience. I know a client beef client picked up last year and I recommended to them they were just feeding traditional straw, as was. And you know, I got them to pre-chop it and they said, all right, we'll give it a go. And every time I speak to them they're just like we can't keep up with demand of the straw. To the point that the last time I spoke to them, oh, we've had to make the feeders even bigger now because they were running out before you know. Last thing at night. We're just, we just can't keep up. So really, if you're feeding straw, please pre-chop it.
Emily Linton:It will make such a difference. Yeah, yeah, brilliant, um, so, yeah, so that's that's. That's a you know that's a massive one. Getting that nutrition right, I think it's. You know, we see so often this sort of skimping post weaning, but yeah, that's something that I think is really important to highlight. Obviously, disease is another thing. You know, if we're grazing these animals, we need to think about parasite populations, because you know that can really sort of check growth potential worm burdens, etc that's right, yeah, yeah.
Emily Linton:So you know if these animals are going out for their first season grazing, they won't have built up any immunity. So it's thinking how we can encourage that immunity, um and not over treat, while also keeping our animals growing well. So you know weighing, I understand, not always easy to do, but it is such. You know it is such an amazing tool in the box that we have. If you know that your animals are growing well, you know you can base so many other management decisions off that. You know we've got the fecal egg counts a little bit more difficult to interpret in cattle than they are in sheep, but we know that that sort of four to six weeks post turnout is a really critical period in terms of giving us an idea of how the season's going to go. So if you can get one in, then that's a really good starting point. Lungworm is another big one. Obviously there are vaccinations available, but you need to get them in early um pre-turnout would you have seen more sorry?
Andrew Jones:would you have seen more of that last year with the wetter season or not?
Emily Linton:yes, yes, we had an explosion of it last year. Yeah, it was a really bad. You know we had several people losing animals with it. It was a really bad year.
Emily Linton:And the problem with lungworm is that it's very, you know, very difficult to detect because of the way the parasite moves through the animal. We're not, we can't pick it up in the in the fecal samples before the animal becomes clinical, up in the in the fecal samples before the animal becomes clinical. And so you know you're, essentially you are monitoring, monitoring the clinical signs. Um, you know, listening for that cough and any small amount of coughing at that high risk period. You want to act. You do not want to think, oh well, let's wait and see if any more cough. So it's all. You know timings and epidemiology and risk periods, and I think you know this is another reason why it's really good to involve your vet, to have those conversations about you know what you should be doing.
Emily Linton:And then, if we're housing animals we've already talked about, you know, pneumonia.
Emily Linton:So bovine respiratory disease, you know that's a massive, massive one one, and there's been some work to show that up to 50 percent of replacement heifers will suffer from an episode of pneumonia in their in their growth period, and you know, we know, that it it affects their milk yield, affects their longevity in the herd, um, so I think that's really something to keep in the top of your mind and focus on. And again, of course, this is something that starts way back in those early years. Lung scanning is becoming a more prevalent tool that's used in our young stock rearing monitoring to assess lung damage within cattle. So cows are generally designed really badly when it comes to their lung capacity. They have really small lung capacity for the size of the animal and so, unfortunately, are really predisposed to respiratory disease, and often this disease is subclinical, so we're not seeing outward signs of it. And by using lung scanning we're able to pick up all these subclinical cases and get a real idea of the prevalence of disease on farm.
Sarah Bolt:So is this becoming more popular now, Emily? Is it something that sort of a lot of practices are able to offer?
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely so. It's been really big in America for quite a long time and yeah, it's probably been over in the UK, I'd say, for the past sort of five to seven years, but getting much, much more prevalent recently. And you know we can use it to identify high risk periods or, you know, ages that animals are being particularly affected and then think about, you know, the management changes we might want to put in place to try and prevent these incidences from happening. And you know again, I'm going to quote Alex back on this because he always says if you've got a scour problem, you've got a hygiene problem full stop.
Emily Linton:If you've got a respiratory problem, it's way more complicated, that, it's multifactorial and there's an awful lot of things that play into that disease picture. So, again, taking that sort of that whole team approach involving farm managers, young stock rearers, vets, nutritionists, you know it's really important, I think, to get the whole team on board in in something like that. Um, so yeah, that's. You know that that's another big one that that we know has a huge impact on on how well these animals do well, you know, you know, just from my own personal experience.
Andrew Jones:I know you had that animal that had a bad case of pneumonia. They never grew the same way, they always struggled. Once they carved, they just they just didn't last, did they. And you know, obviously the numbers are backing it up and I'm just thinking about anecdotal experience of that that bad case pneumonia. The animal just didn't grow and always struggled. Then once she carved to to well, get going basically.
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's. You know it's perhaps that situation, isn't? It is your first loss, your best loss?
Andrew Jones:um well, yeah, I was thinking of that because I know, as I say, I've mentioned it a couple of podcasts before. I know alex has basically, when I was at somewhere last year, basically made that comment that well, if it gets a bad case pneumonia, you're better off getting rid of it then and there rather than spending that money to keep it going to carve it. Well, when you're only going to get rid of it by the end of the first lactation anyway, because it doesn't do the job.
Emily Linton:No, that's it. And so lung scanning is it can be brought in as that tool to sort of, you know, monitor that animal. Are these lung lesions disappearing, are they getting smaller, or, you know, is that lung damage permanent?
Andrew Jones:So from experience, emily, how many, what percentage of people would you say are scanning for lungs or lung damage?
Emily Linton:sorry, yeah, I would say at the moment probably not as many you know as should be. I think it's still in its sort of early-ish stages and I think people need to remember it's it's, it's it is a monitoring tool, so it's not something that necessarily needs to be once you've started doing it, that's it. You're doing it forever more. Like I said, it's it's there to identify high risk periods, high risk age.
Andrew Jones:You know times um, choose a batch and just go scan them basically and see where you are, to give yourself a reference point.
Emily Linton:Yes. So what people? What you can do is take various different approaches. So you can scan a group of calves every seven days and what that will do is identify either high risk buildings as they move you know environments as they move around the farm or high risk you know age periods. So that's one approach you can take. So that would sort of be done with a batch of calves. You identify your risks, you put in your management changes.
Emily Linton:You know people will sometimes scan at weaning. How well is your weaning process? How well is your rearing process gone to get them to this stage? Have we got an issue that we need to go back and look at? Tally that in with the number of animals that were treated? Are we picking it up? People are also using calf rearers. So if you can scan calves off the lorry and those that have lesions can be put in a separate group to be treated, that can be a really useful way of using it and I I'm not sure it's being used so much for this purpose over here yet, but again in america using it pre-service. So you know, is it worth putting semen in this heifer?
Andrew Jones:oh so again. So again, monitoring. That's one of the pre-bullying checks. And right, she's got significant lung damage or whatever the lesions are percentage you're looking at and just go right, that's it. She's better off just being fattened and gone now rather than taking her through otherwise yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Emily Linton:So. Yeah, like I said, it's a monitoring tool in the box. It's, yeah, it's, it's something that's there to be used um to give us more information about, about you know how well we're doing in our, in our rearing process, um, and then I think another couple of areas to touch on are, obviously, you know, management, so stress reduction, you know where and how are we housing or grazing these animals? How many group changes are there? What age range have we got in a group? Is there any bullying? Have we got dead ends in our housing where heifers can be bullied? Have we got enough feed space? You know all these things. What's the underfloor? What are the underfloor conditions? Like you know? Are we going to see these animals bullying or is it too slippy? Are they not going to want to mount each mount each other?
Sarah Bolt:and again it goes back to the fact that often we put those sort of um, those, we put that young stock group into sort of the poorer, housing and that side of things, and actually you're saying that perhaps we we shouldn't be doing that, that they're equally as important and we need to be thinking about all of those things that we we think about for our cattle as well, isn't that?
Andrew Jones:yeah, they're our future. We should be, we should be trying to maximize their potential yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Emily Linton:And I think the other thing is is identification? Oh, there was a heifer in there, which one was it? Well, little things that sound really simple when you say them but are still not being done. You know, on on enough farms, um, and then you know there's there's this thought around synchronization. Should, should we be synchronizing? Is it a useful tool in the box, um, you know, can it help?
Emily Linton:And I think, yeah, again, it's, it's a useful tool in the box, um, for perhaps heifers you know that are maybe out grazing or are in an off farm, you know where people know they're not watching them, perhaps you know as as much as they should. Or you want to, sort of, you know, get them carving down at a certain time, maybe just before the main block of cows. It can be used in various ways, but, yeah, I think it is a good tool in the box. And then, obviously, there's genetic selection. I know people are genomic testing their heifers to think about which ones we might want to breed replacements from, and I think ahdb have done some work showing how that has improved the you know, the pi pli indexes on some farms when they've started to look in more detail at the genomics of the heifers they've got on their farms.
Andrew Jones:Well, and obviously we discussed that recently with helen and stewart and seen the results that they've had and, and you know, using genomics has made a huge I mean, they were a great herd of cows anyway, don't get me wrong but has made huge steps forward for them in terms of health and um and just the benefits they've seen yeah absolutely.
Sarah Bolt:Shall we um sort of start thinking about all of those um sort of kpis then that perhaps we've been missing from the age and weight at weaning through to that age at first calving or when we're billing them? What can and what should we be sort of setting as our KPIs and our targets and therefore using to monitor as we go through?
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely so. I think daily live weight gain is a big one. Like I said, I know it's not always the easiest to do, but if you've got the ability to weigh, use it. If not, there are still simple techniques. You can use sort of like a marker on your handling facilities to show where you'd like your animals to be reaching at certain stages, and leaving it till first service to make sure your animals have grown well enough is almost a little bit too late, because we know we want to be serving them sort of from about 13 months. Um, so you know, perhaps sort of a you know around puberty check. Are we, are we growing these animals as well as we should? If not, we still got a little bit of time to correct that before we, before we want to serve them and then sorry in terms of you know you say simple things like that.
Andrew Jones:You've also got the belly band. But if we're talking percentages, if we're saying they want to be what? 80, 85 percent, uh, mature weight at carving, what sort of weight we talking about for as a percentage, for for bullying? So obviously you know different people, different cows. We're talking a percentage rather than a weight yeah, absolutely so you're.
Emily Linton:You're looking um at about sort of 55, 60 percent for that, for that bullying weight, um, and yet, as sarah mentioned earlier, you know a lot of the data we have that sort of in general consumption is is holstein data. Yeah, um, so you know if, if you're a Holstein herd, that's great, it's all there for you. But you know, if you're crossbreds, you know different breeds, then the easiest way to sort of find out what you should be doing on your farm is to weigh a few third lactation animals and get an average for them. That that will give you an idea of what you know, what your adult weight is, and then you can, you can, work back from that yeah, so you're saying so about 55, 60 percent for your bullying weight to then be carving around 80, 85 percent.
Andrew Jones:This is mature weights now at carving that's right.
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely um. And then you know I think we should probably be looking at um. You know, age at first service. You know what age are we actually getting semen into these, into these heifers? Um, because if we're not even getting it in until they're sort of 16, 17 months old, we're never going to hit that. You know that age at first carving target. So that's, you know that's another area to look at. And then obviously there's age at first carving as well.
Emily Linton:Now, the national data shows that at the moment that's running at about sort of 27, 28 months, which is significantly higher than you know the target of that sort of 23, 24 months. And, as we, you know, discussed earlier, there is a significant cost implication with that. But something we we've done beyond just looking at age at first carving, is looking at that spread of age at first carving, um, which can actually give you quite a bit more information about you know what's going on on a farm? Um, because I'd almost be less worried about a farm with an average age at first carving of 25 months, where 90% of those heifers carve at around you know 25 months, than I would um, about a herd whose average age at first carving is 24 months, but they range all the way from 20 months up to 35 months.
Sarah Bolt:The danger of averages isn't it?
Emily Linton:Absolutely, absolutely. And you know again, we've already said about the risk of these animals that carve, that much older, you know, giving you all these problems costing more and not lasting in the herd as long.
Emily Linton:So you know that data can be a little bit more difficult to pick out, but I think it's really well worthwhile looking at because, yeah, it gives you much more information about how you know how those animals are being managed and when you know. Often I talk to my clients when we're talking about daily live weight gain. It's you know, it's the same with that. Yes, we've got targets to hit there, but almost what is just as important as hitting these targets is the consistency that you know you're getting with your management practices. So, yeah, again, you know an average daily live weight gain of 0.9 is great, but if some of your calves are only growing at 0.5, and you know you've got others way above that then I think there's still some work to be done.
Sarah Bolt:So it's really looking at that data in much greater depth than just averages and actually, as you say, looking at those ranges for each of those groups of livestock.
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Bolt:Absolutely so. I guess you know sort of thinking of farmers perhaps listening to this that know that they're reaching their average age of first calving, or even their average daily life weight gains, but their spread is wider than perhaps they'd like. How would you suggest they go about perhaps trying to reduce that spread and really look into what might be those issues?
Emily Linton:So, you know, obviously, talk to your vet, talk to your advisors. You know it can be a really useful exercise to dig down into that data. Those animals that aren't growing as well or aren't, you know, aren't getting to that target percentage for service. You know, why is that. What are the problems that we're going on? Is it consistency in our management? Have we got, have we had, lots of staff changes? Have we been? You know, have we been changing products, milk powder, starter? Have we changed our forage? You know, are we looking at disease on farm? You know, are we having issues with pneumonia? And it's those animals with pneumonia that aren't growing as well and aren't hitting our targets. You know, have we had a scour outbreak? Is it those animals that struggled?
Emily Linton:You know, when you start looking at data. What it doesn't do is give you all the answers, but what it does do is open up a lot more questions for you to ask, to really dig down into the root cause of what's going on, and that is essentially what we are trying to get to. You know, we want to prevent and manage proactively, you know, rather than chasing our tail because we're not where we want to be.
Sarah Bolt:Certainly, I think it's giving yourself the license to put your toddler hat on and ask why, why, why as many times?
Emily Linton:Absolutely yeah and not stop until you.
Sarah Bolt:In theory, they say you should ask it five times and you should get to your root cause, but I'm not always sure that five's enough.
Emily Linton:And so another area we can look at. So we've talked about, you know, daily live weight gains. We've talked about lung scanning. We've talked about age at first carving, age at first service. We've talked about, you know, survivability, making sure these animals, and you know, give us that economic payback.
Emily Linton:Um, another area we can look at is, first, lactation production. So these animals, um, you know, the target is to carve them in at about 85% of their adult weight and we're, you know, we're looking for them to produce about 80% of the yield of the mature cows within our herd. So you know, again, another really important KPI that we can use our data to assess, to monitor how well are we rearing our heifers, are they doing what we're expecting of them, what we're wanting of them? And you know again, if they're not, it's asking why Is the problem in the pre-weaning period? Is the problem in that post-weaning period? Is the problem, in fact, in that animal transitioning into the herd. So we've done a brilliant job, we've got them, all you know, carving down 23-24 months, but then we mess it all up when we introduce them to the rest of the herd because it's a lot of changes at one time, isn't it?
Sarah Bolt:they've just carved, they don't even you know, sort of they've gone through carving for the first. We've just put them probably into a group of cows that they've not been in with before, unless we're lucky enough to be able to have a heifer group and things like that.
Emily Linton:So yeah, absolutely, and there's actually been some work done to show that giving a heifer some non-steroidals so you know, the anti-inflammatory painkiller post-carving can really help transition them into the herd. Because you know that giving birth is painful, it's no different for our animals and you know they, as you just said, they've got this added stress of all this change and if they're stressed and they're sore they're not going to push their way forward to. You know, eat that feed and and get up and eat and get to where they need to be to do what they want to do, and it's giving them that little helping hand to, you know, transition into that herd more comfortably we were talking about this in the office just just two days ago actually, and we were saying how you know that that heifer that's just carved and making sure we get some water and feed in front of her.
Sarah Bolt:You know, and and my colleagues in the office were going well, after all, we always get a cup of tea and toast after we've given birth in hospital, and I think it was. It was a great analogy.
Emily Linton:Where's the tea and toast for our cows immediately they've carved, and I think that was a really lovely one yeah, absolutely, and actually you know, going back to what I said about them, you know not feeling like they should. You know want it, want to push forward. Actually, you know they shouldn't have to push forward. Feed spaces is it is a huge thing, isn't it? We want to make sure that every animal can eat at the same time. When that, when that food goes out and if you've got heifers in a group, that just becomes even more important, you know not overstocking, making sure there's you know there's enough cubicles for everyone or enough lying space, because again, it's your heifers that are going to suffer, if not just like we said in the heifer housing previously, no dead ends because if anyone's going to get bullied, it's the heifers, she's going to be the one down at the far end being, yeah, being stuck in the corner and wanting to go and lie down and can't, or wanting to go down and eat and can't that's it.
Emily Linton:You know. Good cow flow and all these things then then contribute to that that ease of transition, but also can have effects on, you know, mastitis levels, lameness in particular. You know, we know that an animal that goes, or a heifer that goes lame in her first lactation is then predisposed to lameness for the for the rest of her. You know her career and that is not the the start we want to give these animals.
Sarah Bolt:So do you know if there's been any work actually looking at the, the benefits of putting those heifers into a separate group when they first carve down and you know what those economic benefits are and the welfare benefits and everything sort of what they really stack up to look?
Emily Linton:like I don't have any figures for it, no, but I said all those things that you know we've just talked about in in terms of you know the, the risk of bullying, that stress, that space allowance, they can all be mitigated, you know, by having those heifers in in a separate group. But I understand you know on on a lot of farms that there isn't the capacity to do that um, which is why it then makes it even more important to think about those things when they are transitioning.
Andrew Jones:Definitely Any tips for transitioning at all, other than you say space and all of those sorts of things. Some people have a routine of just simply they carve their straight in the herd, whereas other people will run them through the parlour or the robot or whatever it was pre-carving. Any thoughts on what's a good transition for those animals?
Emily Linton:yeah, so you know, I've got several farms that will house their heifers with the dry cows pre-carving, and I think that helps. Um, yeah, running them through the parlor, through foot baths, and you know that can help. Now, this, this isn't my tip, but it's something I heard from a farmer and they put vinegar down the backs of their heifers before they introduce them to the herd because it doesn't smell very nice, and then all the other cows leave them alone.
Sarah Bolt:This work came out of Ireland. I remember reading it and I've shared that with farmers along the way along my journey. I've shared that with farmers along the way along my journey and I'm sure it originally came out of. It might have been Aspio one of those and it was really interesting. I think the other thing they were talking about was putting heifers into the group in the afternoons after afternoon milking, because that was when the cows were off doing other things in their sort of behavioral time and therefore weren't looking to do that sort of bullying and the like.
Andrew Jones:It's interesting, actually, I heard the vinegar one literally last week. I ran a cow signals course and someone said oh yeah, if we get any animals fighting, we just throw vinegar over them and it stops it. And I'm like what. But it's just interesting that you both, you know, have backed that up with what you've heard elsewhere as well, so they weren't mad then. Whoever, if they're listening they weren't mad.
Sarah Bolt:Well, they might have been, but but I just never heard that one before yeah, and as I say that time of day one, as I say, I think it all came out of the same bit of research work and I'm going back probably 10 or so years ago and I'm sure it was Northern Ireland it came out of.
Andrew Jones:Be interesting for me to look that up actually so I'm looking at the time and, like usual, we're. We're obviously having a great conversation here, but is there any other last words of wisdom you want to bring to this, emily, before we wrap this up for the day?
Emily Linton:um, yeah, a couple of things. Um, firstly is around total protein. So this is looking at measuring how well you're doing your colostrum management, so the passive transfer of antibodies, historically, when we, you know. So we take bloods from calves in that first week of life, so it's from day one to day seven, and we spin the blood down, we put the serum in a refractometer and we read the level off and historically we've sort of had this cutoff point of good or bad and it's been sort of either around 5.5. You want sort of 90% of your animals above that, or, if you're looking at 5.8 cut off, you want, you know, 80% of your animals above that, and that's always been linked with the the risk of mortality. So you know, the more animals you have above those cut off points, the less likely you are to have calf deaths. But there's been some more recent research that has come out and suggested that actually we should be looking at total protein levels above that, so sort of six plus grams per deciliter. And if we are managing to get our colostrum management so good that we're getting up at those levels, not only will we see decreased mortality, so decreased death, but we will also see decreased levels of disease and they've actually made that correlation now. So I think that's, you know that's a really important one to think about. That, you know, it's not just being good enough, it's being as good as we can be and that has those, you know, those knock on health benefits.
Emily Linton:I think the other thing that I was just going to bring in, because I hadn't mentioned it previously, is around how much we're feeding our calves. Now, I know Laura Tennant from Trow bought this up because it's really important when you spoke to her. But you know, historically we have fed calves two litres twice a day at 125 grams per litre. So you're feeding your calf 500 grams of solids a day. We know that the feed conversion efficiency in a pre-weaned calf is around sort of you know, for every 100 grams we feed, we get 50 to 60 grams of growth. So if you're feeding 500 grams of powder, your calf's going to be growing or you know the gain it's going to get from that is 250 to 300 grams a day. Well, okay, it's going to eat some. You know it's going to eat some starter pellets, but it's got to eat a lot of starter to get its growth rate up to that sort of that 0.9, that kilo that you know that we're talking about.
Emily Linton:And I know people are getting much, much better at feeding more. But if we're feeding four litres twice a day at 150 grams a litre, that's 1200 grams of powder a day. You know that feed conversion efficiency that we've just talked about, you're getting up to 720 grams of growth, but you're nearly at your daily live weight gain target just from the milk feeding and then they're going to eat starter on top of that. So you know, just sometimes thinking around those figures can really put it in perspective. You know, are we likely to reach our targets with what we're putting into these calves? And you know, just a little bit of simple maths can help you sort of visualize yes or no. Do we need to do more?
Sarah Bolt:It's a. It's certainly something after my own heart I think you and I totally agree on that that that we we could be feeding so much more to our calves than we are, and it's really important to get that into them.
Andrew Jones:Definitely, definitely, as you say, you know. I know we'd say today has been more talking about the post weaning, but it's getting that pre weaning phase right which just sets them up for everything else. But as you've, you know, highlighted, emily, it's about not just forgetting about them almost until it's time to bull them or time to carve them. It's about making sure they are continuously monitored through their early lives to ensure that they achieve the targets we want them to achieve when we want to achieve them.
Emily Linton:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Andrew Jones:Now, so on that I think. Well, I think that's it for today. But, sarah, any more thoughts from yourself?
Sarah Bolt:I think it's just echoing what you've just said, that we hear so much from the industry about the pre-weaning management of our heifers and then it's as you say, we almost forget about them and actually we want to breed from them. And so it's been really good to sort of have a nice sort of dive in to remind ourselves that the whole rearing period is really important and to actually hear about what we can be doing and what we can be measuring and, as I say, just to remind ourselves that we can't forget about them, because actually by the time we want to be bullying them, it's too late to make those changes. So I think it's been a really, really exciting conversation to just remember that we shouldn't forget, I think it's perhaps a little bit about shifting that mindset, isn't it?
Emily Linton:When we talk about young stock, dairy young stock, often the picture we have in our head is of those animals up to weaning, and I guess what I'm trying to say, what we're all trying to say, is actually, it doesn't end there. We need to think of our dairy young stock. I mean, arguably, up until that, halfway through the second lactation, they've actually done their job of paying us back, but certainly well beyond that weaning period.
Andrew Jones:Definitely, definitely, and I mean I guess you sort of said it there, sarah it's the whole point of this conversation, this podcast, is to highlight things like this, to create conversations on farm to make people think about what they're doing, and if there's something here that it makes you think, well, talk to your advisor, whether it's your nutritionist, your vet or whoever it happens to be to to look at some of those um points in more detail, to then go right. Are we achieving what we want to achieve? Because, as you say, often, often, those those let's call it from three months to, let's say, 15 months, that year is almost forgotten about in a lot of instances. I'm not saying it is all the time at all, but that's when it's probably at its weakest. And then again, once they're in calf, they're probably forgotten about, probably for six months, until again it's ready to start carving them down.
Andrew Jones:And we've got to keep if we want them to achieve what we want to achieve. We've got to be consistent with our monitoring to therefore ensure that we have consistent growth and achieve the targets that we're looking for. So on that, I'd like to thank Emily very much for her time this morning. So thank you very much, emily, but otherwise I guess it's a goodbye from me.
Emily Linton:And from me, and from me and from me.
Andrew Jones:Thank you for listening to the tune the cut podcast, a podcast for the uk dairy industry, brought to you from the southwest of england and listened to around the world. Now for the really boring bit, I'm afraid the legal disclaimer. The information provided during this podcast has been prepared for general information purposes only and does not constitute advice. The information must not be relied upon for any purpose and no representation or warranty is given to its accuracy, completeness or otherwise. Any reference to other organizations, businesses or products during this podcast are not endorsements or recommendations of Tune the Cud Ltd. The views of Andrew Jones are personal and may not be the views of Tune the Cud Ltd, and the views of Sarah Bolt are personal and may not be the views of Kingshay Farming and Conservation Ltd and any affiliated companies. For more information on the podcast and details of services offered by Tune the Cud Ltd, visit wwwtunethecudcom. Thank you and goodbye.