Traditionally the main method of feeding calves has been twice daily bucket feeding.  However, now with the increased need to reduce labour on dairy farms a number of other systems are increasingly being adopted.

Once a day feeding system

Research over a number of years has shown that calves can be fed successfully on once daily feeding systems.  General recommendations for once per day individual bucket feeding systems are as follows:

• In early life once daily feeding is best suited to either whole milk or milk replacers based on skim milk powder, since the casein component forms a clot in the calf’s stomach releasing nutrients slowly over the day.
• There is some evidence to suggest that delaying the start to once daily feeding until 12 days of age maximises performance.
• Feeding calves at the same time every day is important as this keeps calves in a routine and also allows calves to settle onto concentrate feeding.
• The labour saving from once per day feeding can be significant, but it is critical that calves are still checked at least twice per day to detect any potential health problems that may arise.

Group feeding cafeteria

Research with beef calves at AFBI Hillsborough has examined the relative performance of a low labour calf feeding system based on a group feeder designed to feed 30 calves. Calves on the cafeteria, fed once daily, had slightly lower liveweight gains relative to those on a standard system (calves individually bucket fed twice per day).  At 9 months of age, calves reared on the cafeteria weighed 11 kg less than those on the conventional bucket feeding system.  Research is on-going to investigate reasons for poorer growth rates with the cafeteria system.

Automatic Feeders

There is growing interest in the use of computerised automated milk feeders that control nutrient input on an individual calf basis, with 3% of dairy farmers in  Northern Ireland using these feeders.  These types of feeders have been used at AFBI Hillsborough for 9 years and have been found to rear calves with similar levels of performance to individually housed bucket fed calves

The high initial capital cost of purchase of automatic feeders and ongoing maintenance costs must be considered carefully before choosing this approach.

Labour requirements

From experience of different calf feeding systems practiced at AFBI Hillsborough, the time required to feed 50 calves per week using a range of feeding systems has been estimated (Table 5).  In this exercise, once per day feeding systems (bucket and cafeteria) started when calves reached 2 weeks of age and calves on all systems were assumed to be weaned at 6 weeks.  The time required for veterinary treatment or bedding is not included.

Table 5.  Estimated time required daily to feed 50 calves with different milk feeding systems (from 2 weeks to weaning at 6 weeks)

Main message

• Options to reduce labour input in milk feeding calves exist. However, the best system for feeding calves is likely to vary between farms taking into account cost, labour and management issues.