Down on the Farm: Calf care

A Guernsey cow calf on the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm.

On the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, calf care is front and center to providing top-quality milk to our consumers. It’s a carefully attuned process, and it’s one our farmers take seriously. 

A mother cow (or dam) has a “dry” period of about 60 days before she gives birth. During this time, she is not milked and is fed a special ration to ensure her needs and the needs of the fetus are being met. On the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, the cows due to calve are housed in a designated barn with straw-laden maternity pens.

A University of Kentucky Extension report noted that since the growth of the fetus takes biological priority over maintaining the mother’s own nutrient stores, an underfed dam will have trouble calving, and both the calf and mother may struggle with low performance. Thus, closely monitoring cows close to calving in a designated barn like the one we have is critical to ensuring cow and calf health through the end of the pregnancy.

Once a dam has given birth, her calf is moved to a calf hutch. These individual hutches help prevent the spread of diseases from calf-to-calf and support the calves’ immune systems by protecting them from the wind (in the cooler months) and providing shade (in the warmer months). Shortly after birth, they are fed colostrum — the milk secreted by the mammary glands directly before and after birth — which helps to further develop the calves’ immune system. After that first meal, calves are either fed pasteurized milk or, like they are on the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm, milk replacer, which can be compared to baby formula.

After their initial stay in the hutches, calves at the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm move in a cohort of 16 to a group pen in a barn ventilated by fans and tubes and bedded with straw. There, they are fed milk replacer through autofeeders until it’s time to be weaned.

The autofeeders operate much like the milking robots. A calf’s identification tag indicates to the autofeeder whether or not the calf is eligible for feeding. (They can drink up to 7 liters per day spread over multiple meals.) If they are, the autofeeder will send milk from its stainless-steel basin to the teat, allowing the calf to nurse. 

After 7 weeks, calves are weaned and moved into larger groups. Springing heifers are moved into that maternity barn a month before calving. (For those unfamiliar with dairying terms, a heifer refers to a cow who has not yet given birth or produced milk, and a springing heifer refers to a heifer in her final weeks of pregnancy.) 

Then, the process starts over again: birth-ready attention, calving, calf hutches, calf barn, heifer stalls. 

During my visit to the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm this spring, the calves were peeking out of their hutches as I approached to snap photos. I thought about the milk in my tea and the yogurt in my smoothie and how these little faces, with their dark, curious eyes, and the farmers who care for them make it all possible.