Calves are creatures of habit. They crave physical comfort, companionship, and, of course, their milk ration.

One of the best things we can do as calf raisers is to deliver those elements consistently.

Raising calves is a serious business – one that has become increasingly precise in terms of nutrition, business operations, and health and management protocols. Refractometers provide on-farm precision for a number of management protocols that support calf health and performance.

For many years, colostrum delivery within the first 24 hours of life – and the sooner, the better – has been emphasized. That’s because we know that calves have a finite opportunity to absorb critical immunity-boosting antibodies – particularly immunoglobulin-G.

Some of the most common conversations among calf raisers relate to weaning age. What is the best age to wean calves? What is the cost versus benefit of various weaning ages? And what milestones should calves be hitting for successful weaning?

The beef and dairy industries are becoming more closely aligned than ever, thanks to the widespread adoption of beef-on-dairy breeding.

When it comes to raising healthy calves, sometimes it’s the details you can’t see that make all the difference.

There was a time when feeding milk replacers supplemented with antibiotics was considered a “blanket” insurance policy to protect calves from disease. But that practice has changed considerably. Industry data suggests that 20 years ago, roughly 20-40% of all calf milk replacer contained antibiotics. Today, it’s less than 5%.

What if you could give your calves a feed additive that improved their health, helped them gain more weight in the first weeks of life, and didn’t add any appreciable cost to your input budget?

Working at Strauss Feeds is less about being male or female, and more about being a qualified individual who can perform a job well, ultimately delivering the best products and services to the customer.

At Strauss Feeds, calf milk replacer has been a mainstay of our business for more than 50 years. But we are truly infant animal health specialists, and also manufacture lamb and kid milk replacers.

The recent publication of new national dairy calf nutrition standards has prompted us at Strauss Feeds to do some updating of our own.

Feeding pasteurized waste milk to preweaned calves can make sense economically, and many dairies and calf raisers do it very well. But managing a pasteurizing system is definitely not a “no-brainer.”

If there were a bovine equivalent to an “A-list” celebrity, it would be today’s dairy heifer calf.

In a matter of just a few years, beef-on-dairy crossbreeding has taken the U.S. cattle industry by storm. Many calf barns that used to be consistently loaded with black-and-white Holstein calves now have mostly black-hided residents.

Fall is a busy time of the year for dairies and calf operations, and it’s also a time we need to be extra-vigilant about a life-threatening health condition for calves: bloat.

Acidification of milk and milk replacer is a practice that has been around for a long time, with ebbs and flows of popularity. It involves adding an organic acid to lower the pH of the liquid ration to manage the growth of detrimental bacteria.

It may seem strange to start planning for colder weather in July, but depending on where you live, that’s probably what you should be doing. We understand a lot more than we used to about calves’ nutritional needs in cold weather.

In our quest to achieve high-quality dairy replacement and market animals, we want to raise them using the best ingredients to support their health and growth. Plus, we want to do that as affordably as possible.

In this quick video, MacDonald compares a sample of traditional, instantized milk replacer blend, versus the Autofeeder Blend.

Today’s dedicated calf-raising facilities regularly receive pre-weaned calves that may have traveled from a few miles to a few thousand miles. Having a plan in place for each load can help ensure that those calves settle in and take off to a healthy start in their new homes.